The first major decision you’re going to make when it comes time to establishing an eCommerce website (assuming you’ve already made the decision to do it and what you’re selling) and probably the one that will have biggest long-term impact on your business - selecting a shopping cart platform.  Choosing the wrong shopping cart platform is something that can turn around to haunt you for years to come - and switching from one to another is costly and time-consuming (and usually a pain in the ass).

The problem is, shopping cart software is a dime a dozen, and doing a google search for “ecommerce shopping cart” doesn’t exactly guide people in the right direction. In this two part series, I’m going to outline some of the features to look for, some of the major players out there, as well as some resources to help you in navigating through the maze of options. All while trying to keep this article short enough to hold your attention.

Features

As I’ve mentioned in our eCommerce Consulting Services overview, the shopping cart market has matured enough where most of the platforms out there share the same set of basic features to accommodate most of the standard shopping cart needs. That’s not to say you shouldn’t review these features carefully - I wouldn’t even consider any shopping cart platform that does not have a feature matrix readily available. If you don’t know what features you’re going to need for your site just yet, just think about the products or services you’re selling and think about the properties of them. Do they have variants (colors, sizes, etc.), or kits, are they drop shipped? These types of questions will help identify what kind of features you will need. It might also be helpful to find other websites selling these same products and try to determine what they are using. Many times, it is listed in the footer of their site, or other times you can view the source of the page and it may be commented somewhere in the header what platform they’re using. If not, you can always revert to contacting the webmaster directly and straight out ask them what platform they use and if they’re happy with it (just don’t let them know you’re looking to enter the market as a competitor). Aside from what I’d consider the “normal” features, here’s a few other items we identified as high priority items for one of our last eCommerce sites.

• Integration with back-office systems: Something many merchants don’t consider until they reach a volume where manually recording your website sales into your accounting system become too time consuming. This is oftentimes a feature that is available with many carts through a third part add-on. If you will need your website to integrate with your accounting system - even if not at first, make sure it is scalable and a solution is available to accommodate this functionality. Also, some of the more recent developments with managed providers like NetSuite and Interprise Suite allow for a fully integrated back-office and front end system all in one! We’ll cover this topic a little more in depth in a future article.
• Extensibility: What we mean by extensible is that the solution allows for the integration of add-ons and third party tools. This allows for the platform to be more scalable and flexible to meet your needs. And you never know, at some point you may want to add some unique feature (for example like rotating product videos instead of photos) and although most shopping carts don’t support that today, you wouldn’t have to rely on them to develop it in a future release, you could have a developer modify the platform to allow for this new functionality.
• One-Page Checkout: It still amazes me that many of the shopping cart platforms out there still don’t have this feature. With all of the studies indicating the huge decrease in shopping cart abandonment rates just by having a simplified one-page checkout without requiring users to register, this is a must-have in my opinion.
• Design Flexibility: Maybe this is my personal priorities, but usability and accessibility should be important factors when it comes to the design of any website, including eCommerce sites. What exactly does this mean? I’ll refer you to Jakob Nielson’s site and the Website Accessibility Initiative to fill you in. At the end of the day though, CSS based website designs allow your site to be more compliant with both of these standards. Many shopping cart platforms today use hard-coded table based designs that are often difficult to modify or are even impossible to design around a complete CSS framework.
• Custom URL Rewriting: Most shopping cart platforms today tout their “SEO friendliness” and included in these features is usually URL rewriting. In fact, I wouldn’t recommend a platform that does not have URL rewriting. URL rewriting allows you to have “pretty” URLs, for example: instead of having a URL like www.mysite.com/details.asp?productid=12345&menuid=4&cat=3 you could have www.mysite.com/details/product-abc.html. Why does this even matter? Well, it has been noted that having keywords in your URL is an SEO factor. But, the real benefit lies in what a user sees as the URL, what link would you rather click on, some convoluted string of mumbo jumbo, or a nicely formatted URL with the product I’m looking for right in the URL? But like I said, most platforms already have this feature, but many times the structure of this URL is hard-coded and defined by them. So they may append product ids, other characters, etc. onto the URL. So they’ve added the keywords to the URL, but it still hasn’t done much to improve the “look” of the URL. Some platforms allow you to actually define, product by product, the URL that you’d like to use. While this seems like it could be a maintenance nightmare, the benefit of the feature outweigh any increase in workload for managing your products.
• Custom Meta Info: Having the ability to have custom title, and description tags for each page on your site is a must. I can’t count the number of eCommerce sites that every page has the same title on every page - that’s an SEO no no.

There’s obviously many other features you’re going to need, but these are a few of the not-so-standard features in today’s standards. In Part II of this article, we’ll cover some of the major players in the shopping cart platform arena, but first let’s direct you to a few of the resources out there to help you in making some of these decisions. And when I say a few, I mean it. There’s not a lot of unbiased information out there with candid reviews of shopping cart platforms - unfortunately. Mark Baartse makes a good attempt with shopping-cart-reviews.com but at this point the information available is limited. And if I could recommend a feature for the site, it’s the ability to search by or at least have the results come up with average rating. Pulling up PHP carts and having a list of 60 of them doesn’t exactly help me which ones to narrow down. The compare feature is nice, but again, out of that many options available how do I know which ones to compare? Otherwise, this someday could be a useful unbiased resource. Doing a Google search for “shopping cart reviews” comes up with a variety of affiliate sites and not very helpful resources with enough reviews. There’s some scattered comparison resources out there, Top Ten Reviews has a little bit, but other than scouring forums for feedback you’re on your own for the most part. At the end of the day, your best bet for honest feedback is to contact random sites that use the software (not the referrals they give you) and ask them about their experiences with the software, aside from perusing through the forums for the platforms you’re considering. But stay tuned for part 2, where we’ll point you out to a few of the big dogs out there with some of our experiences with them. To be continued…

What is a blog?

A blog has been defined by numbers of people in a variety of ways. But to summarize, a blog is a series of posts (or articles) on a website by a particular author or group of authors over time pertaining to a particular subject or subjects. Blogs can typically be grouped into two categories: personal and business. Granted there’s going to be some overlap between the two, but typically personal blogs focus around opinions, hobbies, or interest of the author, while business blogs are more professional in nature, dealing with particular industries and business issues.

There’s already a wealth of published information dealing with blogging for beginners, how blogs work, and even how to make money from your blog. So for the sake of needlessly repeating all of these well covered issues, I’ll focus on what all of this means for eCommerce Merchants.

Business Impact

Web 2.0, blogs, social media marketing, viral marketing - if you haven’t been living in a cave the past few years, you should have at least heard of these terms before. It’s all the rave right now, and everybody’s doing it - so to speak. Many companies, in an attempt to stay on course with current trends and technology, have quickly embraced these technologies to help foster their online presence years ago. These pioneers of the “blogoshpere” have helped identify issues and questions any organization should address before starting blog - and we’ll cover a few of them below.

There are an estimated 120,000 new blogs appearing daily (source http://www.sifry.com/alerts/archives/000493.html), and while the pace of this growth in 2007 has slowed from its pace in 2006, we’re still seeing the use of blogs growing as an influential medium on the internet. It is estimated that 25% of eCommerce businesses have used a blog on their website as a form of their marketing mix (source MarketingSherpa eCommerce Benchmark Guide). It’s a mixed bag of those that have seen success with their blog, and those that have not. Let’s first talk about why it seems like everyone wants to setup a blog for their website, and then we’ll talk about some of the major issues you’ll need to work through to establish the success of your blog.

Benefits of a business blog

So what is so valuable about these blogs that everyone is so excited about? Well, let’s talk about what I like to call the “big four”:

(1) Search Engine Optimization: While nobody should go into this with the expectation that setting up a blog on their business website will instantly shoot their site up to #1 in Google, it has been noted that having a blog on a website has had a positive effect on the search engine rankings for many websites. Why does it seem like search engines prefer websites with blogs? Well, they don’t. There are a lot of misconceptions on this issue, in fact, just the other day I overheard someone answering a question about blogs - and in my closest attempt at quoting him - “search engines look for websites with blogs and rank them more important”. This is categorically incorrect. The reason that blogs actually have an influence search engine rankings is the inherit benefits in running a blog on your website, factors that have had an effect on search engine rankings since the algorithms were in its infancy. In fact, blogs merely gave webmasters a tool to easily apply many of these factors to their websites. So what are these search engine benefits associated with running a blog?

Content: In today’s world of search engine optimization, you’ll probably run into the phrase “content is king” everywhere you turn. The fact of the matter is that search engines like content - lots of valuable, fresh, relevant content.

Freshness: Fresh, updated content has long been rumored (nobody knows for fact after all) to influence search engine rankings.

Links: Particularly with Google, much emphasis on the value of your site focuses around what other websites link to you. The more quality websites that link to you, the more your website is considered an “authority” on the topic. Take a look at some of the social media marketing experts that focus around creating “link bait” articles - articles that are successful at generating links to your website, thus enhancing its popularity.

(2) Viral Marketing: The use of social media sites such as Reddit.com, Digg.com, StumbleUpon.com, and more are all on the rise. By creating blogs and submitting your articles to these websites, you are making your information readily available to their community of users. Better yet, by creating articles that are interesting, unique, funny, or just downright valuable, these social media sites’ users can rate and share your articles with other users, with the potential for your article to be exposed to thousands of readers daily. With the proper content, blogging can be one of the most cost-effective forms of online marketing.

(3) Industry Trends (Web 2.0): While I personally despise the use of the term Web 2.0, the fact of the matter is that the trend of internet users is becoming more social. By ignoring these trends, you may be putting yourself at a disadvantage by missing out on the opportunities presented with these new technologies.

(4) Establishing yourself as an industry expert: In order to write blogs about a particular subject matter, you should first possess some kind of knowledge or insight that you have that others don’t – this is what creates the value of a blog, and why people will want to read it – for that valuable information. When you’re well versed with a particular topic, and can demonstrate that knowledge, blogs give you ability to share that information easily. And the more recognized you become in the industry, the more you are going to establish yourself as an expert in that field. When a potential customer now goes looking for some information on that subject, maybe also in need of related services, you’ve already established a level of trust before even coming in contact with the potential client or customer.<

Issues to consider before starting a blog

(1) Technology: While technically, it is very easy to implement a blogging system and integrate it into your website, it is important to carefully review and choose the correct blogging platform to meet your needs.

(2) Resources: While it sounds easy to write blog articles on the occasional basis, you should consider writing a blog from a journalistic perspective. This requires someone with some writing skills, knowledge of proper grammar and spelling, knowledge of the subject matter, and a hint of creativity (the more the better). While you don’t necessarily need to have a Journalism degree to be a successful blogger, it is important to at least understand some of the underlying journalistic concepts. On top of possessing these skills, this resource will need to devote the necessary time to write an article at a minimum of once per week. That means you’ll have to make it a priority for this person to allocate four or more hours per week in writing a well thought out, properly referenced article. From a business perspective, you can consider this the ongoing costs of running a blog (the technical costs are usually minimal).

(3) Commitment: Before starting a blog, it is important to understand the level of commitment necessary for success. Generating momentum for your blog takes time; it may take many months before you’ve created a reader base. I can’t count how many blogs I come across that have been abandoned after 4 months. Similar to starting a business, you have to exercise patience before you can expect to see the results from those efforts.

(4) Purpose: What is your goal in creating the blog? Are you just doing it because everyone else is? What tangible business benefit are you hoping for? Who do you want to read this? By answering these questions, you will be able to provide a direction for the blog and the articles and content can be written around that. To build a reader base, you’ll need to provide them something valuable.

(5) Measuring success: What defines your success? Like any marketing campaign, it’s important to always measure the success your efforts. Make sure you have an analytics package in place or plan on some other method to gauge your results. Again, don’t dispel the success of your blog too quickly; with enough time you will be able to determine the success. But, along the way track it’s progress and use that to determine which types of articles are getting the most hits, what types of articles are leading to conversions on your website, and what types of articles aren’t so successful (indicated by high bounce rates, low visitor depth, short time spent on site, etc).

(6) Promotion: How are people going to find your blog? Does your website draw enough visitors naturally to create a reader base? Promoting a blog and getting people to it is an important aspect that many organizations overlook. Think of it as marketing your marketing materials. This promotion typically needs to take place after you’ve built up a bevy of valuable articles (I’d recommend usually a few months worth), and should be targeted to other social media in raising awareness that your blog exists, and has some valuable content.

At the end of the day, a blog can provide a lot of value for a business website, but it is important to consider all of these factors before you make the leap into the “blogoshpere”.

As an eCommerce Consulting firm, Blue Acorn strives to achieve success for eCommerce merchants by critically assessing the features, functionality, and performance of retail websites. From time to time, we will be randomly selecting websites to feature in our Website Reviews category. So, here is our disclaimer: The owners of these websites have not been solicited, contacted, or informed of their inclusion of these reviews unless specifically noted in the review itself. The review is neither an endorsement nor a discouragement of the website being reviewed.

These websites are chose at random (as we come across them) to be used as examples to illustrate a particular point - be it a positive example or a negative one. If you would like your website featured in a review, please feel free to submit your website using the form below. If your website has been a featured eCommerce Review and you have any concerns, please contact us to address them.

The intention of this website is to provide resources to eCommerce website owners and managers that cover a variety of topics that affect to the world of eCommerce retailing. Over time, we’ll be covering a number of issues both from a business and technical perspective that affect eCommerce merchants. Whether you’re a “do-it-yourself” eCommerce manager, a business just starting out in eCommerce, or an individual looking for tips and advice on how to improve your existing retail website. Among the topics we’ll be covering:

• SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
• Marketing & Public Relations (including PPC marketing, affiliate marketing, email marketing, search engine marketing, offline marketing, public relations strategies, and more)
• Technical Issues (including programming technologies, shopping cart functionality, custom development, etc.)
• Design (web design, usability design, conversion optimization, logo design)
• Integrations (integrating your eCommerce website with backend office systems for streamlined framework)
• Business Issues (legal issues, business strategies, competitive strategies)
• Online retail topics (order fulfillment, purchasing, customer service)
• and anything else having an effect on the world of eCommerce

Due to the variety of topics that affect Internet retailing, our objective is to collect, research, and analyze in-depth information regarding each of these topics, but present them to you in a format that’s easy to understand, and more importantly, easy to act on. And while the information presented here is targeted towards Internet retailers, much of the subject matter will prove helpful in other areas as well. So, just because you may not be an Internet retailer, don’t rule yourself out just yet.

If you don’t know much about SEO for example (or are confused by the wealth information that you may come across), there are already numerous blogs out there that do a great job in handling the intricate details of that practice. We are not here to replicate their work, but what we will do is provide our own insight, our own examples, and provide real life situations of the application of SEO. We’ve owned eCommerce websites, we’ve spent the countless hours every week for years researching these topics, and we’ve learned a LOT along the way! But what we’ll try to do is save you some time in your efforts, time is money and you can spend 40+ hours a week for weeks researching SEO alone - but that leaves little time for everything else that affects your business. Because of the many factors that affect eCommerce merchants, there are so many things to look at, but such little time to do it. And on top of that, the playing field is constantly changing, what may be in today is old news tomorrow. We’re going to stay on top of the trends, the technologies, what’s hot, and what’s not. And we’re going to share that with you. Why? Because we’re a fan of the underdog, the go-getter, the do-it-your selfer. We want to help businesses succeed.

You’ll find that our articles will range from very the very basic, to very detailed. We want to provide a resource to all eCommerce merchants, from start-ups to heavy hitters. We promise we won’t discriminate (except maybe if you’re Wal-Mart). But at the end of the day, if you’re an eCommerce merchant, we’re here to help you. So, sit back, absorb some information, and jump in if you have a question - and of course, thanks for reading!