Friday, July 20, 2007
Shopping Cart Product Pictures
The most obvious advantage a physical retail store, or brick and mortar business, has over an ecommerce store is product experience. In a store, shoppers can see, feel, touch, maybe even taste or smell the products they are interested in. What does this tell us about the world of virtual shopping? Buyers want to know what they are getting. That is why product images are so vital to any ecommerce establishment. These pictures are the only experience a shopper will have before the product arrives at their door.
Each product should ideally have more than one picture for examination by customers. Whether this includes an action view and a display view, or a front view and side view. The images need to be clear and of high resolution. Customers are guaranteed to harbor distrust for a site that has blurry pictures. The clearer the view, the better comfortable shoppers feel about particular products. Granted, this has little to do with the actual quality of the product, but customers need to be assured. If you do not already own high quality pictures of your products, it is worth the cost of a good product display photography to create some nice images.
Your shopping cart software should be equipped for enlarging or magnifying product photos. The magnification function is very effective in helping the customer feel like they can really inspect the item thoroughly. This is especially desirable if you are selling electronics, jewelry, or other extremely detail oriented products. It is important to use high-resolution photos with product magnification because a lack of resolution in the photo will prevent a nice clear magnification, thus rendering the function useless.
The 360 degree product rotation is the closet a customer will be to touching the item with their own hands. This allows the customer to view the product as it rotates a complete turn seamlessly, or the camera rotates a complete turn around the product. This is becoming extremely popular in the world real estate. A 360 degree view can really give a customer a feel for the size, shape, and look of a room. Cars and cell phones were among the first products to have 360 degree virtual displays for online sales.
How many pictures are too many for product displays! You can never have to many pictures or angles of a product. Not only do pictures help clench a sale, they spark real interest. Visual browsing is not just for brick and mortar stores, it continues to play a huge role in online retail sales. Pictures are the biggest secret to online product sales, from catching shoppers' attention to assuring them of quality. Great images make all the difference.
About the Author: Matt Foster is the President of ArteWorks SEO and founder of PrimeCart, fully search engine optimized shopping cart software. For more information about shopping cart or ecommerce software visit www.PrimeCart.com.
Each product should ideally have more than one picture for examination by customers. Whether this includes an action view and a display view, or a front view and side view. The images need to be clear and of high resolution. Customers are guaranteed to harbor distrust for a site that has blurry pictures. The clearer the view, the better comfortable shoppers feel about particular products. Granted, this has little to do with the actual quality of the product, but customers need to be assured. If you do not already own high quality pictures of your products, it is worth the cost of a good product display photography to create some nice images.
Your shopping cart software should be equipped for enlarging or magnifying product photos. The magnification function is very effective in helping the customer feel like they can really inspect the item thoroughly. This is especially desirable if you are selling electronics, jewelry, or other extremely detail oriented products. It is important to use high-resolution photos with product magnification because a lack of resolution in the photo will prevent a nice clear magnification, thus rendering the function useless.
The 360 degree product rotation is the closet a customer will be to touching the item with their own hands. This allows the customer to view the product as it rotates a complete turn seamlessly, or the camera rotates a complete turn around the product. This is becoming extremely popular in the world real estate. A 360 degree view can really give a customer a feel for the size, shape, and look of a room. Cars and cell phones were among the first products to have 360 degree virtual displays for online sales.
How many pictures are too many for product displays! You can never have to many pictures or angles of a product. Not only do pictures help clench a sale, they spark real interest. Visual browsing is not just for brick and mortar stores, it continues to play a huge role in online retail sales. Pictures are the biggest secret to online product sales, from catching shoppers' attention to assuring them of quality. Great images make all the difference.
About the Author: Matt Foster is the President of ArteWorks SEO and founder of PrimeCart, fully search engine optimized shopping cart software. For more information about shopping cart or ecommerce software visit www.PrimeCart.com.
Labels: shoping cart software
Monday, October 02, 2006
Groundbreaking Ecommerce Software Released by Top 15 Search Engine Optimization Firm
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Media Contact:
Matthew Foster
PO Box 1967
Austin, TX 78767-1967
Phone: (512) 535 2821
Toll Free: (877) 812 2217
matt@arteworks.biz
http://www.arteworks.biz
- Internationally recognized search engine optimization firm releases the latest version of its search engine friendly ecommerce software -
Austin, Texas – October 2, 2006 – ArteWorks Business Class, ranked #14 in the world for organic search engine optimization by independent ranking organization TopSEOs.com, has released version 3.0 of its search engine friendly ecommerce software solution known as PrimeCart.
"PrimeCart is the only ecommerce software of which we are aware that was created specifically for search engines by a top ranked search engine optimization firm," commented Matt Foster, President of ArteWorks Business Class. "PrimeCart solves the problem of search engine invisibility that most ecommerce platforms face. We are confident that this is the most search engine friendly shopping cart software available on the market today."
"ArteWorks Business Class has demonstrated that it is a leader in its field, showing superior service levels and performance for their clients," commented Bill Peden of TopSEOs. "ArteWorks Business Class is a standout amongst the many Internet marketing vendors in the $5 billion plus search marketing industry."
PrimeCart is affordable to small business, with pricing beginning at only $59.00 per month, yet powerful enough for enterprise. It is loaded with search engine features such as static url’s, dynamically generated Google sitemaps and Froogle feeds, individual product page customization, and eliminates problematic session id’s and dynamically-generated product pages which are largely invisible to search engines.
"It is important to remember that search engines rank pages, not sites. It is therefore crucial that each product page not only be visible to the search engines, but be individually optimized for the contents of that page. The vast majority of ecommerce software available today simply ignore basic search engine optimization techniques, such as custom head tags, H1 tags, image alt attributes, and allow for no or limited unique product page optimization. Additionally, advanced techniques such as RSS feeds and content syndication are noticeably absent in most off the shelf systems," continued Foster.
PrimeCart comes with a free trial and a “no hassle, money back guarantee”. More information on PrimeCart can be found at www.primecart.com.
About ArteWorks Business Class
ArteWorks Business Class, the developer of PrimeCart, is located in Austin, Texas and specializes in search engine optimization, search engine friendly ecommerce and search engine friendly web site design. ArteWorks Business Class maintains a global client base and is the recipient of numerous design awards for its work. ArteWorks Business Class is ranked in the Top 15 organic search engine optimization firms in the world by independent ranking organization TopSEOs.com.
Company Contact
ArteWorks Business Class
Matthew Foster
matt@arteworks.biz
www.arteworks.biz
About TopSEOs.com
TopSEOs.com was founded in 2002 by e-ventures and serves to provide the search engine marketing industry and companies with a single source for researching internet marketing vendors as well as a place for internet marketing and service providers to showcase their services. http://www.topseos.com
Company Contact:
topseos.com
Bill Peden
service@topseos.com
www.topseos.com
Media Contact:
Matthew Foster
PO Box 1967
Austin, TX 78767-1967
Phone: (512) 535 2821
Toll Free: (877) 812 2217
matt@arteworks.biz
http://www.arteworks.biz
- Internationally recognized search engine optimization firm releases the latest version of its search engine friendly ecommerce software -
Austin, Texas – October 2, 2006 – ArteWorks Business Class, ranked #14 in the world for organic search engine optimization by independent ranking organization TopSEOs.com, has released version 3.0 of its search engine friendly ecommerce software solution known as PrimeCart.
"PrimeCart is the only ecommerce software of which we are aware that was created specifically for search engines by a top ranked search engine optimization firm," commented Matt Foster, President of ArteWorks Business Class. "PrimeCart solves the problem of search engine invisibility that most ecommerce platforms face. We are confident that this is the most search engine friendly shopping cart software available on the market today."
"ArteWorks Business Class has demonstrated that it is a leader in its field, showing superior service levels and performance for their clients," commented Bill Peden of TopSEOs. "ArteWorks Business Class is a standout amongst the many Internet marketing vendors in the $5 billion plus search marketing industry."
PrimeCart is affordable to small business, with pricing beginning at only $59.00 per month, yet powerful enough for enterprise. It is loaded with search engine features such as static url’s, dynamically generated Google sitemaps and Froogle feeds, individual product page customization, and eliminates problematic session id’s and dynamically-generated product pages which are largely invisible to search engines.
"It is important to remember that search engines rank pages, not sites. It is therefore crucial that each product page not only be visible to the search engines, but be individually optimized for the contents of that page. The vast majority of ecommerce software available today simply ignore basic search engine optimization techniques, such as custom head tags, H1 tags, image alt attributes, and allow for no or limited unique product page optimization. Additionally, advanced techniques such as RSS feeds and content syndication are noticeably absent in most off the shelf systems," continued Foster.
PrimeCart comes with a free trial and a “no hassle, money back guarantee”. More information on PrimeCart can be found at www.primecart.com.
About ArteWorks Business Class
ArteWorks Business Class, the developer of PrimeCart, is located in Austin, Texas and specializes in search engine optimization, search engine friendly ecommerce and search engine friendly web site design. ArteWorks Business Class maintains a global client base and is the recipient of numerous design awards for its work. ArteWorks Business Class is ranked in the Top 15 organic search engine optimization firms in the world by independent ranking organization TopSEOs.com.
Company Contact
ArteWorks Business Class
Matthew Foster
matt@arteworks.biz
www.arteworks.biz
About TopSEOs.com
TopSEOs.com was founded in 2002 by e-ventures and serves to provide the search engine marketing industry and companies with a single source for researching internet marketing vendors as well as a place for internet marketing and service providers to showcase their services. http://www.topseos.com
Company Contact:
topseos.com
Bill Peden
service@topseos.com
www.topseos.com
Monday, September 04, 2006
Custom Head Tags in Ecommerce Software
An important feature to look for in ecommerce software is the ability to customize head tags for each product page. This is important for search engine optimization purposes, as search engines look to the information contained in the head tags to ascertain the subject matter of a page.
Head tags are often given the misnomer "meta tags". This misnomer is only partially accurate, because while metadata is a subset of head tags, the important tags we are referring to are the title tag and the meta description tag. The title tag is a head tag but not a meta tag, the description tag is a meta tag contained within the head tags of a web page source code.
The title and description tags are extremely important for search engine optimization purposes. As such, it would be a grave mistake to ignore them. Unfortunately, most ecommerce software available today will generate a head tag and description tag that is used throughout the site, regardless of the content of any particular page.
For example, say you are selling clothing. You have various types of clothing on your site, men's shirts, women's blouses, slacks, and skirts. In a typical ecommerce software configuration, the system will generate a set of title and description tags that are static throughout the site. In this case the title tag might say something like this: "Online clothing store". The description tag might read like this: "We offer quality clothing at affordable prices".
The problem is this: search engines rank pages, and not sites, and if each of your product pages contain identical head tags, as described above, you are losing the search engine visibility you would desire for any particular product. For example, the head tags given above would not assist the search engines in ranking a product page for the term "women's blouses" or "men's slacks".
Therefore, an important search engine feature of any ecommerce system would be the ability to customize the head data for each particular product page. This way, each page would contain product-specific information within the head tags, which would then increase the search engine visibility of that particular product for relevant search queries.
In the example above, a product page buried deep within the ecommerce software which was an attractive women's blouse would contain the following customized head tags:
Title: "women's blouse womens blouse blouses"
Description: "Hip, sleek and attractive women's blouse, perfect for casual business environments or a night on the town."
In this way, search engines are provided much more information on the product in question. The customization of the head tags in this manner would then allow the particular product page to appear high in the search results for relevant queries, such as "women's blouse" or "women's blouses". Again, it is important to remember that search engines rank pages and not sites, therefore each particular product page should be individually optimized for the contents of that page.
An excellent ecommerce software, which supports custom head tags in the manner described above, is available at www.primecart.com. This shopping cart software was developed by an SEO firm which is ranked in the top 20 such firms in the world, and is the only ecommerce software that I know of specifically designed for search engines by a top ranked SEO firm.
About the Author: Matt Foster is the President of ArteWorks Business Class, an internationally recognized search engine optimization firm which developed a world class, search engine friendly ecommerce software. For more information, please visit www.arteworks.biz or www.primecart.com.
Head tags are often given the misnomer "meta tags". This misnomer is only partially accurate, because while metadata is a subset of head tags, the important tags we are referring to are the title tag and the meta description tag. The title tag is a head tag but not a meta tag, the description tag is a meta tag contained within the head tags of a web page source code.
The title and description tags are extremely important for search engine optimization purposes. As such, it would be a grave mistake to ignore them. Unfortunately, most ecommerce software available today will generate a head tag and description tag that is used throughout the site, regardless of the content of any particular page.
For example, say you are selling clothing. You have various types of clothing on your site, men's shirts, women's blouses, slacks, and skirts. In a typical ecommerce software configuration, the system will generate a set of title and description tags that are static throughout the site. In this case the title tag might say something like this: "Online clothing store". The description tag might read like this: "We offer quality clothing at affordable prices".
The problem is this: search engines rank pages, and not sites, and if each of your product pages contain identical head tags, as described above, you are losing the search engine visibility you would desire for any particular product. For example, the head tags given above would not assist the search engines in ranking a product page for the term "women's blouses" or "men's slacks".
Therefore, an important search engine feature of any ecommerce system would be the ability to customize the head data for each particular product page. This way, each page would contain product-specific information within the head tags, which would then increase the search engine visibility of that particular product for relevant search queries.
In the example above, a product page buried deep within the ecommerce software which was an attractive women's blouse would contain the following customized head tags:
Title: "women's blouse womens blouse blouses"
Description: "Hip, sleek and attractive women's blouse, perfect for casual business environments or a night on the town."
In this way, search engines are provided much more information on the product in question. The customization of the head tags in this manner would then allow the particular product page to appear high in the search results for relevant queries, such as "women's blouse" or "women's blouses". Again, it is important to remember that search engines rank pages and not sites, therefore each particular product page should be individually optimized for the contents of that page.
An excellent ecommerce software, which supports custom head tags in the manner described above, is available at www.primecart.com. This shopping cart software was developed by an SEO firm which is ranked in the top 20 such firms in the world, and is the only ecommerce software that I know of specifically designed for search engines by a top ranked SEO firm.
About the Author: Matt Foster is the President of ArteWorks Business Class, an internationally recognized search engine optimization firm which developed a world class, search engine friendly ecommerce software. For more information, please visit www.arteworks.biz or www.primecart.com.
Friday, August 25, 2006
Why Session ID's Make Ecommerce Software Difficult for Search Engines
By and large, the biggest problems faced by ecommerce software is search engine visibility. The problem arises as the result of major search engines being unable to crawl the entire contents of a shopping system. A major contributor to this problem is the use of what is known as session id's.
Session id's are used by ecommerce software for the purpose of tracking visitor activity, populating shopping cart contents, and other uses. A session id usually appears in the url of a product page of an ecommerce system in the form of a string of letters and/or numbers which follow an ampersand, question mark, or a short identifier string such as "sid". Examples of what a session id might look like in your address bar include the following (in these examples, the session id is denoted as abcdefg):
a) www.yourstore.com/products/productid=123&=abcdefg
b) www.yourstore.com/products/productid=123?=abcdefg
c) www.yourstore.com/products/productid=123&sid=abcdefg
A session id is a variable which is unique to to the visitor and time of the visitor's visit to the ecommerce system. The session id is a unique string of characters and is never repeated - it uniquely identifies each "session" on the web site. Two different visitors to the web site constitute two unique sessions. Additionally, the same visitor visiting the web site on two separate days would likewise constitute two unique sessions.
A session id cannot be dropped into the address bar of a browser and result in the rendering of a particular product page. The pages viewed by the visitor to the web site do not physically exist on the server, instead they are dynamically generated on the server side, rendered and served to the client (visitor) machine as viewable html.
This is the root of the search engine problem. As the pages do not physically exist on the server, and the url of each page rendered contains a unique session id which cannot be replicated, the search engines cannot find (or crawl) the catalog of the ecommerce system. The result of this is that the use of session id's virtually eliminates your entire catalog from the index of the search engines, as if your catalog does not exist.
This, of course, can have a drastic affect on search engine visibility, traffic, and rankings. For example, if you are selling blue widgets, but the search engines cannot see that you are selling blue widgets, a search for "blue widgets" on a major search engine will not turn up your web site. As over 85% of all online transactions have their genesis in a search query, the amount of traffic, and therefore sales, that you are missing as a result of the use of session id's is self-evident.
When selecting an ecommmerce software for your online storefront, it is crucial that you select a system, such as that found at www.primecart.com which does not include session id's as part of the product page url's.
About the Author: Matt Foster is the President of ArteWorks Business Class, creator of PrimeCart, the first ecommerce software created for large scale use by a search engine optimization firm ranked in the top 25 firms worldwide. For more information, please visit www.primecart.com.
Session id's are used by ecommerce software for the purpose of tracking visitor activity, populating shopping cart contents, and other uses. A session id usually appears in the url of a product page of an ecommerce system in the form of a string of letters and/or numbers which follow an ampersand, question mark, or a short identifier string such as "sid". Examples of what a session id might look like in your address bar include the following (in these examples, the session id is denoted as abcdefg):
a) www.yourstore.com/products/productid=123&=abcdefg
b) www.yourstore.com/products/productid=123?=abcdefg
c) www.yourstore.com/products/productid=123&sid=abcdefg
A session id is a variable which is unique to to the visitor and time of the visitor's visit to the ecommerce system. The session id is a unique string of characters and is never repeated - it uniquely identifies each "session" on the web site. Two different visitors to the web site constitute two unique sessions. Additionally, the same visitor visiting the web site on two separate days would likewise constitute two unique sessions.
A session id cannot be dropped into the address bar of a browser and result in the rendering of a particular product page. The pages viewed by the visitor to the web site do not physically exist on the server, instead they are dynamically generated on the server side, rendered and served to the client (visitor) machine as viewable html.
This is the root of the search engine problem. As the pages do not physically exist on the server, and the url of each page rendered contains a unique session id which cannot be replicated, the search engines cannot find (or crawl) the catalog of the ecommerce system. The result of this is that the use of session id's virtually eliminates your entire catalog from the index of the search engines, as if your catalog does not exist.
This, of course, can have a drastic affect on search engine visibility, traffic, and rankings. For example, if you are selling blue widgets, but the search engines cannot see that you are selling blue widgets, a search for "blue widgets" on a major search engine will not turn up your web site. As over 85% of all online transactions have their genesis in a search query, the amount of traffic, and therefore sales, that you are missing as a result of the use of session id's is self-evident.
When selecting an ecommmerce software for your online storefront, it is crucial that you select a system, such as that found at www.primecart.com which does not include session id's as part of the product page url's.
About the Author: Matt Foster is the President of ArteWorks Business Class, creator of PrimeCart, the first ecommerce software created for large scale use by a search engine optimization firm ranked in the top 25 firms worldwide. For more information, please visit www.primecart.com.
