E-Commerce Blog

How many times has this happened? You compose a blog post, usually in a hurry, then hit the submit button, only to read it later and wonder how in the heck you missed what is a glaring error. I am the world?s worst.
Years ago, a veteran magazine editor gave me this advice, ?Never edit your own stuff.? It?s advice which, when possible, I?ve taken to heart. The only problem is, how many of us are in a position to have another person, preferably an editor, proof our copy? In lieu of that, here are some blog copywriting tips I?ve picked up along the way that can almost guarantee that what I intended to say is what I actually said.

* Use spellcheck. That?s a no-brainer, right? If you?re posting on a personal blog, it might not be such an issue, but if you?re blogging for business, I think correctly spelled words along with the use of proper grammar is a non-negotiable. Nevertheless, as obvious as this might seem, I suspect the spellcheck icon in the editing…

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Never Edit Your Own Stuff

WeddingThings is an established ecommerce company that sells the unique gifts wedding guests traditionally take home, as well as other wedding essentials for the perfect wedding such as invitations and bridal-party gifts.

Eugene Mar, vice president of WeddingThings, wants some insight for increasing referrals from search engines and increasing conversions from visitors to customers and he?s requested this site grade. Lets take WeddingThings through our conversion scorecard and see what opportunities exist.

Findability

Qualified prospects must first find your website, and once at your site it must be easy for them to locate the products they are seeking. A broad search for ?wedding favors? does return WeddingThings.com on the first page of Google results, but broader need-based queries such as ?eco friendly wedding favors? or ?wedding reception guest ideas? does not return WeddingThings in the first few pages of Google search results.

When performing these…

Excerpted from:
Conversion Report Card: WeddingThings.com

To be honest, it was a little embarrassing to be the daughter of an entrepreneur who was trying to start up a mail order livestock supply business back in 1975.

Ruth Jeffers was a little girl when her dad, Dr. Keith Jeffers, decided to provide a higher level of service to his cattle clients around Springfield, Missouri, and launch a livestock supplies catalog.

?When by grandfather died we moved from St. Louis to the ranch in Southwest, Missouri,? Ruth explains. ?Dad started selling cattle. He was always hard working and extremely honest and he became the world?s largest cattle dealer. The he started selling livestock supplies out of our basement to the people who were buying cattle from us.?

That doesn?t seem to embarrassing. But there is more.

Jeffers: As kids my sister and I were totally embarrassed because we had to answer our home phone, ?Thank you for calling Jeffers, this is Ruth, may I help you.? We also had to collect empty boxes that we could use…

Dr. J?s Pet Project

English Habit is an ecommerce outlet for English equestrian products (horse riding stuff). The site appears to be built on one of GoDaddy?s pre-fab platforms, which isn?t necessarily bad, but worth noting. I don?t know much about horse riding, but it looks like a fun and interesting sport, and those English riding boots really get me going. Perhaps I?ll learn a little while evaluating the site. Let?s saddle up and take a look.

Home Page Content

The home page has some good quality textual content on it, though it doesn?t incorporate heading tags, which is a big missed opportunity. Words in heading tags are given more weight by search engines, offering the opportunity to stress keywords on a given page by the use of those tags. While the website?s categories are linked textually, allowing for search engine spiders to follow them into the site, an internal sitemap would be a good backup. A sitemap link in the footer not only helps search engines find all the sections…

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SEO Report Card: Englishhabit.com

In Field Test, Practical eCommerce has gathered twelve seasoned ecommerce merchants and asked each of them the same questions around a given topic. This month?s topic is order management software.

The participating ecommerce merchants are: Dave Norris, House of Antique Hardware; Justin Hertz, MuttMart; Chris Stump, Only Hammocks; Mike Feiman, PoolDawg; Dan Stewart, Xtreme Diesel Performance; Cindy Barrileaux, Write Your Best; Claudette Cyr, Gear-Source; Kristen Taylor, Juvie; Jeff Muchnik, RedBox Tools; Kara English, Candles & Such.

PeC: Do you use any form of order management software?
Field Tester 1: No.
Field Tester 2: Yes.
Field Tester 3: Yes.

PeC: What brand do you use?
Field Tester 1: N/A.
Field Tester 2: NetSuite.
Field Tester 3: Zoovy Order Manager.

PeC: What shopping cart and accounting software do you use?
Field Tester 1: I use CKGold for my shopping cart and QuickBooks for Mac for accounting.
Field Tester 2: We?re using NetSuite for accounting. Our…

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Field Test: Order Management Software, Part One Of Three