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A Guide to Starting an eCommerce Store

Have you always wanted to start an eCommerce store but not known where to start?

This guide will give you some of the tools you will need to get your very own online store up on the world wide web.

Let’s cover some of the things you will need to start your own eCommerce business online.

How To Start an eCommerce Business

An online eCommerce business can be a project that you can start from the comfort of your own home, or it could be an extension of an existing real-world business that you already have running.

Either way, it can be a simple enterprise that you can create and grow or a complicated task involving a large team.

You can target business-based markets that are:

  • B2B: A business that sells supplies or services to other businesses
  • B2C: A business that sells supplies or services to consumers

Or as a single operator business your markets could be:

  • C2C: Supplying goods or services to other consumers
  • C2B: supplying goods or services to businesses.

Which type of business you are in will be determined by your skills and the market that you want to serve.

start an ecommerce business

Choose a Product You Want to Sell

If you have an interest in a product segment or service, then convincing customers about your passion for the product and what it will do for them is a lot easier.

Your online business could be providing a service or supplying goods.  The goods could be something you create or a product you buy from a manufacturer or distributor and on-sell to the end user.

Find Your Niche

Your store won’t be the largest store on the internet at the beginning so select a niche market that you want to target and cover that well.

This focus ensures that when a customer visits your store the messaging around your products align well with the product offer you have.

Your niche should solve a need that isn’t being solved well by anyone else and be aimed at a group that has enough disposable income to spend it on things that make them happy or satisfies their requirements for an interest that they have.

Your niche could be based-on price/product quality mix where you aim to be cheaper than all your competitors or the quality of your product and service is so much greater than your competitors that the value your customer associate with your product drives repeat sales and customer satisfaction.

Your niche could be your neighborhood or city.  If your eCommerce store is booking services like plumbing repairs you may not want to travel the country for a small job, or a pizza store may have a limited area that they offer the delivery service.

There are demographic groups that may be a target for your product.  Baby clothes are best targeted at new mothers and mobility walkers for seniors.

You may also target a niche group with a common interest or attitude.  You will always sell more golf clubs to people who like golf!

Research the Product

How Will You Sell Your Product?

If you are offering physical goods, will they be in single packs or bundles?  Will your offer be for a service or a downloadable item like an ebook, course, or subscription service?

You may wish to purchase your goods from a manufacturer or distributor and re-sell them while manufacturing your own saleable items is also an option.  Home-made goods like candles, jewelry, and clothes can be popular on specialist sites like Etsy.

Another popular selling method online is drop shipping.  This is where you offer goods for sale on your eCommerce business website and when a customer orders the good you arrange for the distributor to deliver them directly to your customer.

ecommerce business website

By doing this you don’t have to carry physical inventory or have the hassles of organizing couriers and packing.

Drop-shipping can work with local suppliers or many international distributors will ship around the world on your behalf.

Legal Requirements

You will need to research your selected product for the local legal requirements in your state.

Does your business require registration to operate in your state and is there a need to register for sales tax?

A registration may be required if providing professional services and permits may be required for some types of production, like producing food items for consumption by humans or pets.

Consulting a legal professional or tax accountant may be required to ensure that you are compliant with the local laws before commencing operations.

Research The Market

Use tools like Google search to find other businesses offering a similar product to your own and investigate their price and service offers.  What are their strengths and weaknesses?  Where do the opportunities lie for your new business in this market?

This is referred to as a SWOT analysis.  Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats.

If you take a piece of paper and draw two perpendicular lines to divide the sheet into 4 squares, then write each of the SWOT headings in a box.

Next, write down each of the competitor’s strengths and weaknesses in the relevant box then formulate the opportunities and threats that this proposes for your business.

From the SWOT analysis, the threats give you insight and the opportunities help forge your direction forward.

You need to determine the size of your niche market and whether there is room for your new business to fit into the market.

If you decide the market is too crowded it could be that your product is just not niche enough and you need to drill down further to create a specialized niche of your own.

How Will you Differentiate Your Product and Service Offers From Others in the Market?

When you want to go deeper into research many online tools can assist you with evaluating what consumers are searching for online.

One of these is the Google Keyword planner.  This will allow you to enter your search term and see how many searches have been made over the period you specified.

You can also specify a region to search as well.  A high volume of searches for the keyword indicates a high demand for that good or service.

A low volume of keyword searches may indicate a low demand for your niche product or service, or it could just indicate that the public isn’t aware of your niche solution!

The keyword planner also includes related searches which can lead to showing you similar searches that have been conducted to your request indicating what the public is searching for.

Google Trends is a platform that allows you to track the number of searches on a topic over time through what has been searched on Google.

Enter your keywords with a date range and you will see the trend in searches for the keywords over time.  This could indicate an increase or decrease in demand but can also indicate if interest in your product may be seasonal in nature.

Select a Business Name and Register it With the Government

Again, consulting with your accountant or a legal professional may be the best start to determine whether your new business will be a sole trader, a limited company, or a corporation.

Each of these structures may require registration to operate in your state.  You will also need to consider whether you need an EIN with the IRS or any other registrations required to operate your business online.

Do your local laws require you to register for sales tax or any other specific registration required for your business.

Choose an eCommerce Platform

There is a wide range of eCommerce platforms available on the market each with its pros and cons, and a wide range of monthly and startup costs associated with each.

You need to select a platform that you are confident will scale with your business as you work hard to grow sales over time.

You also need to consider your (or your team’s) technical ability and how easy or hard the setup process may be for the platform you are selecting.

Sometimes the simple platforms don’t provide the flexibility to perform the customization that you want and the fully customizable platforms may have a steep learning curve.

If you already have a WordPress blog, then you can easily add a product like WooCommerce to your blog to have a fully featured online store system.

Other choices include open-source alternatives like Magento or OpenCart, or you may want to select an integrated online platform like Shopify, BigCommerce, or Wix.

ecommerce platform

If you plan to market some of your products through third-party marketplaces like Amazon, eBay or Etsy then make sure your selected solution has the tools to connect easily to these marketplaces to save you duplicating your work.

Each of these platforms has costs and benefits so research hard into the best solution for your product and proposed marketing offer.  If you try hard and get a minimal package you can start your online store for as little as $100 a year.

Many of these solutions include a credit card payment gateway or you can choose an external Payment Gateway Supplier like Host Merchant Services that will work across all of these platforms for you.

Create your site

In much the same way as you would open a traditional storefront on a particular street or neighborhood, or in a shopping center, your online eCommerce business has a place and a look and feel.

Your physical shop storefront has signage outside to attract customers to enter and a certain look and feel once you enter the store.

Your online eCommerce business needs to cover all your brand artifacts as well so when customers are dealing with your brand, they are happy to buy.

Your selection of colors and styles for your online site is important to reflect the values of your brand and what you stand for.

Your logo, themes, and images are also a reflection of this brand.

It’s important to ensure you cover a couple of legal requirements on your site to show your customers you care about doing business with them.  Your privacy policy, shipping and returns policy and other data retention policies (that may be covered by law in your area) will communicate with your customer how you will deal with their data and any issues with the transaction.

Load your Products

Now that you have selected your products and market and determined where you are going to source, or manufacture, your products it’s time to start loading products onto your site.

As part of your brand style that you determined when setting the site up all your images and colors must be consistent across your site.  Depending on your product range it’s generally better to have all your images with the same background color and image style.

A site with a mixture of landscape and portrait images all with different colored backgrounds can look as unorganized as a dress shop without any clothes hangers.

This guide to eCommerce photography may help.

Launch!

With your site live in the world, don’t sit and wonder where the customers are.

Depending on your chosen platform you should have access to analytics for the visitors to your site.  Sites like Google Analytics can give you lots of data on how many visitors you had to your site, where they live, how many products they looked at, and more.

Analyzing this data can help you target your marketing efforts and make modifications to your site.  You will enjoy watching the visitor numbers rise over time.

You’ve early determined your target niche market for your site so now is the time to connect with them on their favorite social media network and let them know you are open for business.

Marketing Your Business

As part of your preparation plan, you should have put together a business plan that outlines what your business brand stands for and how you want your customers to view you.

Taking this data, you need to craft marketing for your business and start driving traffic to your eCommerce store.

You can pay for ads on Google and other search engines that will appear alongside people’s search terms when looking for your goods or services.

The amount you pay per click or per impression will be determined by how competitive your keywords are.

If your product fits into the demographic then have it seen with social media influencers that align with your brand values.  This can lead to easy exposure for your product, sometimes at a minimal cost for the exposure that the influencer can bring to your brand.

You should run organic traffic and paid campaigns on social media like Facebook and Instagram.  By its social nature, the idea is to get a viral message spread through these mediums and reach more people through their contacts and their contacts, contacts.

Most of the eCommerce platforms outlined above have an element that will allow you to collect email addresses from potential clients through a popup signup form or contact page.  Also, look at getting people who buy to opt-in to future email marketing so you can retarget them in the future.

Email marketing is also a great way to make an offer to people who have already purchased to encourage friends and family to purchase from your store with a coupon or discount code, thereby increasing your customer base further.

And all through this marketing journey, you should be constantly working on organic Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

SEO is the least expensive method to drive customers to your online eCommerce business.  Every time they search on Google, Bing, or Yahoo and you appear on the first page of the results you are going to increase your traffic.

Therefore, it’s important to make sure that your products and blog posts contain the keywords that people are searching for online about your business.

Your blog posts should reinforce your product keyword strategy to ensure you are seen as an authority on the topic that your business is about.

Your eCommerce Store Online

ecommerce store online

Once you have your store up and running how successful it is is determined by how well you market your goods or service to your target market.

Your marketing doesn’t need to involve a huge monetary outlay, but it does need to be targeted and consistent.

Most eCommerce stores take around 18 months to 2 years to see results or even think about making a profit so don’t let the small hurdles set you back and keep pushing through with the enthusiasm that made you want to start your eCommerce Business in the beginning.

Once you are at the right point you can scale your business and take it to the next level.

Frequently Asked Questions

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Skyrocket Sales With These SEO Tips For Your Shopify Store

Shopify is one of the best ecommerce platforms you can utilize. Shopify helps you create unique online stores and checkout experiences. You can keep track of customer and transaction data with Shopify, plus you can design your store to feature whatever might interest your customers the most.

The best Shopify stores will use search engine optimization or SEO standards for work. You can use SEO to make your Shopify store easier to spot. SEO standards can also make your site easier to operate and organize. Here are some tips you can use to boost your SEO efforts.

Create a Sensible Website Structure

Start by looking at how well your website is working. You can prepare a new website structure that is SEO-friendly and keeps your website organized. Your arrangement can entail a few steps for making things look well:

  1. A home page
  2. Separate pages for individual categories
  3. Pages within each category for specific products you want to sell

The website should focus on what you offer in general at the start. You can then stick with more specific things later.

You can use as many levels as you wish for your structure. But everything should stay arranged regardless of whatever you choose when handling your work.

Create a More User-Friendly Page

It is easier for search engine spiders to look through your website when you have a user-friendly page. You can use a few points for creating a page that’s easy to read:

  • Use a mobile-friendly theme that takes less time to load.
  • Smaller images are ideal, as they don’t take a while to load.
  • Don’t use sliders on your page, as they can take a while to load and might be tough to read.
  • Remove apps and other features that you aren’t actively using on your website. Removing unnecessary items makes it easier for you to load your site.

Figure Out the Right Keywords

The keywords for your website can make a positive impact if you know what works. You can use the right keywords based on:

  • Prospective buyer personas
  • Past sales history, including what items people are interested in the most
  • Social media hashtags or keywords surrounding your products for sale
  • Titles and meta content on competitors’ websites
  • Descriptive details surrounding the products for sale
  • What uses people might have for products
  • Whether you are targeting any specific geographic areas

Review Your Links

Your Shopify store will be easier for search engines to find if you have enough links. You can build links with suppliers or manufacturers, or you can get in touch with influencers or industry leaders who want to promote your content. You could also highlight any positive mentions you have on other websites and promote them from your site.

The most essential part of managing links for SEO purposes is to remove any broken links you might find on your website. Broken links can hurt your SEO performance, as they will lead search engines to dead ends. Remove these links and check whether there are any suitable replacements you could utilize when managing your links.

Provide Suitable Descriptions

Every product you sell on your website should feature a unique description. Your SEO standing will rise when you have unique content on your website. Each product can have distinct keywords, descriptive points, and other things that a search engine can notice is unique. These details will make your work more manageable for a search engine to spot.

Include Additional Details

You can add further details to individual product pages on your Shopify website. Some of these details may include:

  • Answers to whatever questions people have about something
  • Technical details, including what something is made of or its physical dimensions
  • What problems your product can resolve
  • Recommendations, including suggestions on who should be using a product the most

Add Tags To Your Media

Any photos, videos, and other bits of media you use will be more valuable if you have the right tags. Each photo or video should come with a title tag that features a keyword surrounding its content. You can add a small meta description tag that adds more details on something if you wish. Each piece of work you have should feature a unique tag that explains what you have and how people can distinguish what you provide.

Be sure you keep those pieces of media under control and that your tags don’t last for too long. Be certain those media items are also easy to load and won’t become too complex to follow. They also shouldn’t take a while to load if used right.

A/B Testing Works

A/B testing is a process where you test two different website layouts to see which one is more effective. You can test these based on how long it takes for them to load and which ones people might interact with the most. A/B testing features can come with analytical features if you use the right testing program, so check on what Shopify has when looking for help.

Use a Shopify SEO Plugin

The last tip to follow involves using an SEO plugin on your Shopify website. Shopify supports many SEO plugins like Plugin SEO, SEO Image Optimizer, and Smart SEO. These are all plugins you can download from the Shopify control website.

Each plugin available will review your website and see how you’re handling keywords and other bits of content. A program can reveal what keywords you’re using the most, what keywords your competitors are ranking for, and which pages are getting the most organic traffic. The analysis setup will help you see what you should be doing and what you could improve upon when fixing your website.

You can take note of all your SEO plans for your Shopify website to see what fits. You will bring in more people to your website when you have an SEO plan that looks great and fits whatever you want to do with your business.

Merchant Services: Defining Tech Talk

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For merchants navigating their business through the e-commerce industry, there’s quite a lot of technical jargon to be aware of. It’s now more important than ever to stay on top of the latest buzz words that go along with the technology that is at the heart of e-commerce. It can sometimes be a hassle to figure out what tech trends are important to business and what’s just a passing fad. The Official Merchant Services Blog offers some insight and explanation for some of the most important technologies that are affecting businesses today:

1. Virtualization.

Virtualization is the creation of a virtual (rather than actual) version of something, such as a hardware platform, operating system, a storage device or network resources. Cloud Hosting is essentially an extension of virtualization. But it goes way deeper than that.

Hardware virtualization or platform virtualization refers to the creation of a virtual machine that acts like a real computer with an operating system. Software executed on these virtual machines is separated from the underlying hardware resources.

Virtualization is something businesses can use to improve their workflow as well as their performance. You can pretty much “virtualize” just about any hardware or software that you need. One of the classic examples of Virtualization is an operating system. Mac users who run Windows on their Mac, are using Virtualization.

2. The Cloud.

The phrase “the cloud” is getting tossed around everywhere today. From television ads that boldly utter “To the cloud!” to web hosting companies offering cloud hosting, it’s a pervasive bit of tech jargon. But what exactly is the cloud?

Cloud Computing is a model of computer use based on sharing computing resources stored in an online environment rather than having local servers or personal devices to handle the applications. Cloud computing is obtaining mass appeal in corporate data centers because it enables the data center to operate like the Internet.  Cloud solutions for businesses are often more efficient and less expensive than maintaining software and servers on local machines. This can apply to everything a business needs to function, from financial software to document and file storage. A cloud solution can take all of that online, allowing a business (from many locations even) to access the application remotely.

A cloud can be private or public. A public cloud sells services to anyone on the Internet. (Currently, Amazon Web Services is the largest public cloud provider.) A private cloud is a proprietary network or a data center that supplies hosted services to a limited number of people. When a service provider uses public cloud resources to create their private cloud, the result is called a virtual private cloud. Private or public, the goal of cloud computing is to provide easy, scalable access to computing resources and IT services.

3. Search Engine Optimization.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a specific topic we’ve covered before in The Official Merchant Services Blog. But it is extremely important and worth adding to this list. SEO is about maximizing the potential of your website to attract online customers. What it boils down to is a series of tactics and actions that you take to improve your web site’s page ranking on internet search engines. The higher your site is on searches, the easier it is for potential online customers to find your site. This drives potential business to your web site.

4. Unified Communications.

Unified Communications (UC) is a really basic concept with that can sometimes be presented to people in a complicated manner. What it essentially is: The merging of multiple communications tools, such as web conferencing and instant messing, into a single interface or integrated system.  Much like Search Engine Optimization, UC can be very helpful to businesses. On even a basic level, a business can make itself more efficient by maximizing their communication tools. This could be something as easy as integrating BlackBerry with Outlook.

5. Crowdsourcing.

Crowdsourcing, a phrase coined by Jeff Howe in a 2006 Wired article, is the act of outsourcing tasks usually performed by specific individuals instead to a group of people or a specific online community through an open call. Crowdsourcing is a distributed problem-solving and production model. The way it works is problems are broadcast to an unknown group of solvers in the form of an open call for solutions. A “crowd” of users typically forms into an online community, and the crowd submits solutions. The crowd also sorts through the solutions, finding the best ones. These best solutions are then owned by the entity that broadcast the problem in the first place –– the crowdsourcer –– and the winning individuals in the crowd are sometimes rewarded.

The typical activities that crowdourcing gets use for are design tasks, the refining or carrying out of an algorithm’s steps, or help in capturing or analyzing large amounts of data. Because it can handle functions like those, crowdsourcing has become popular with businesses. Essentially it can be used leverage mass collaboration enabled by Web 2.0 technologies and then help businesses achieve their goals.

It All Ties Together

This is just a short list of tech terms that merchants will encounter while trying to get their e-commerce solution running smoothly. Remember that value to your business is the cornerstone for evaluating technologies that can enhance your business. So don’t be confused or deceived by the buzz. Gimmicks can seem tempting and attractive, but always keep in mind that the product or service needs to bring something to the table that specifically improves your business. In the five examples provided here, there is one underlying theme to take note of: They all connect.

Virtualization ties into Cloud Computing, as one is an extension of the other. SEO and UC share the same goal of optimizing the way your business does a specific function –– search engine results of your businesses’ web site for SEO, and efficient communications within your business for UC. It’s also worth noting that many SEO tactics hinge on using Social Networking tools to improve your SEO, and those same Social Networking tools can be made more efficient with UC concepts and tactics. It’s all about improving your business and the tech presented here today by Host Merchant Services can be linked together in a concerted effort to enhance what your business can do online.

Google+ is Here for Businesses [2023 Update]

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The Official Merchant Services Blog has been following Google+ and its beta for awhile now. We previously detailed the potential upside of Google+ for small businesses in this blog entry. The major setback to Google+ for businesses at that point time was that Google hadn’t fully allowed businesses to function in Google+.

That changed three days ago. On November 7 Google announced that businesses were fully allowed to add pages and started accepting submissions. No longer restricted to just personal accounts and no longer tied to strictly Gmail, Google+ gave users the ability to utilize their fledgling social networking tool.

Host Merchant Services jumped on the offer, and you can find our Business Page here. You can also find our local small business page here.

So now that Google has opened the flood gates to businesses, what is the impact going to be? Should you jump right in feet first? What will this do to help your business and its marketing?

The Nuts and Bolts

First let’s review what Google+ Pages can functionally do for businesses:

Google+ Pages are different from regular use profiles. They have some limitations, such as Pages can’t add people to circles unless the page is added first or mentioned. Pages default privacy settings are public, they can’t +1 other pages nor can they +1 stuff on the web. Pages don’t have the option to share to “extended circles,” they don’t receive notifications via e-mail, text or in the Google bar. Pages can’t initiate a hangout on a mobile devices.

Google+ Pages also have advantages, such as they can be made for a variety of different purposes (brands, shops, celebrity figures, sports teams). They have the +1 button and can +1 certain things. Local pages include information about a business’ physical location (map, address, business hours and contact details).

The Pros

One  big factor for Google+ Pages right now is the functionality of circles. It’s more flexible and offers merchants more abilities than its Facebook equivalent. G+ Pages can use circles to segment different groups of connections, better organizing a business’ connections with its customers. The default settings already demonstrate the power of this over Facebook, as it sets up the circles for “customers,” “VIPs,” and “team members,” making it easy to target how you share information with your followers.

Another big plus for Google+ is the Hangouts feature –– which allows users to set up one-click video conversations with other users, fans or colleagues. The potential for your business from Hangouts is quite robust and Facebook offers nothing like that. You can utilize this as standard customer service, or instant face-to-face feedback from customers; you could also utilize it for marketing services, or running mini-workshops or webinars. That’s just a few off the cuff ideas on how to utilize this feature.

And then there’s the as yet unrealized potential of Direct Connect –– the feature that lets you quickly navigate to a Google+ page (and add that page to your circles) directly from a Google search bar. And that’s the real strength of Direct Connect: The Google search bar. This feature is still being worked on so it only works for a handful of big brand name pages, such as Pepsi. But this is definitely something that will shape businesses and what they can do, because it ties the social media extension into the Google searching functionality. Which is the bread and butter of Google.

The Cons

What are the cons of Google+? It’s still new, still in testing so there are some very noticeable drawbacks to Google+. Right up front, one of the biggest ones is G+ Pages do not currently allow multiple page administrators. So while with your Facebook page you can have multiple people in your business accessing the page and managing the content, G+ still only has its Pages as an extension from a single account. That needs to change. And Google is aware of the issue and is working on it. But for now it does create a bottleneck in terms of usage and is an obstacle for businesses in terms of utilizing Pages as powerfully as other social media options.

Another drawback is that Google+ does not allow contests. This TechCrunch article reveals that there’s explicit language in the Google+ Pages terms of service prohibiting businesses from running contests, promotions, sweepstakes, offers, or coupons. That’s a big blow for businesses, as all of those activities are popular with other social media outlets. From Facebook to Groupon, businesses are extensively using Social Media to promote and market through coupons and contests.

And another problem for Google+ Pages stems from the difference between a Page and a Local Business Page. The Local pages include your business’ location, and is tied into Google Maps and the Google Local features. But it is separate in some of its functions from a page setup based on the other list of purposes. Google explains the difference as: “Currently, Place pages and Google+ Pages must be managed separately. A Place page provides information about a business and makes it easy for customers to find local businesses on Google Maps and local search; while a Google+ page provides business owners with additional ways to engage, build relationships and interact directly with customers.”

Many businesses already have their Local entry set up through Google maps. So this raises some concerns and issues with compatibility that Google itself opened up by making the Local entry available in the Google+ Pages signup.

The Verdict

Google+ Pages have revitalized the Google+ project. It launched with a lot of buzz and then it tapered off. It comes storming back into peoples’ attention with this new development. And even with the few obstacles and issues it currently has, it’s definitely worth getting your business involved in it. From the start it benefits your e-commerce presence. Right now Google+ may not overtake the established juggernauts, like Facebook. But it’s really quick and easy to create your G+ Page and get it set up. Tying it into other social media outlets and continuing what you were already doing is what The Official Merchant Services Blog would advise.

Keeping it fresh and active will help you in the long run, because in terms of marketing your business, the potential that Google+ has over all the other social media tools is that it’s going to be able to impact the Google search engine more directly. And that’s the bottom line for businesses: Page ranking. The value to be had in the long term is too great to not get started now. As Direct Connection gets worked on and improved and as Google+ begins to ramp up its efforts to compete with Facebook and profit off of the investment in its social media tool, the strength of the search engine is what everything will hinge on. Including your business and its online presence.

So give Google+ a try, get your Page going and prepare yourself for more SEO opportunities.

Use Analytics to Maximize E-Commerce

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Then next phase in The Official Merchant Services Blog series on assisting merchants with beefing up their e-commerce presence this holiday shopping season focuses on web analytics. In a previous blog we gave merchants tips on how to improve the overall e-commerce picture. That blog focused on broad strokes and the process of landing on the merchant’s site and purchasing goods or services from the site. A second blog delved into Search Engine Optimization, assisting merchants with boosting their web site’s page rank when potential customers searched for the goods and services the merchant was selling.

Today’s blog brings both of those strategies together through web analytics. The process needs to be streamlined and strong. Your customers need to be able to find your page when they search, find your products when they get there and buy your products with no hassles. Click, click, purchase.

And how do you know if that is working? If your site is actually doing that and doing it well?

That’s where analytics come in.

Good website analytics take the mystery out of wondering who’s visiting your website and why. You don’t need to be an online marketing whiz to use them effectively. There are plenty of analytics packages for sale, but you can get started for free through Google Analytics. The Google service provides you with a line of code to plug into each of your website pages, and you can then start tracking your site’s data. You can get a breakdown not only of how many visitors came to the website, but how long they stayed, what site they previously came from, what search terms they used to reach the website, and which pages they visited the most.

Here are five questions to help you maximize your use of website analytics:

  • Do your visitors already know you? The whole point of the website is to link you with potential new customers who interested in your business. A well-designed website should only have a small percentage of visitors who have used the company’s name to find it in a search query –– suggesting they already know your business before they stopped by.
  • Are you bringing in potential customers? You want to make sure that people landing on your page are getting there using specific keywords. These keywords are relevant to the goods and services you provide. That way the traffic that seeks you out is the traffic that wants to purchase what your site is selling. Let’s say you’re a web hosting provider. You want the people searching for “web hosting” or “cloud hosting” to find you.
  • Does your social media presence work? Analytics let you monitor where your visits come from. So you can gauge how many visitors are coming from your social media activities. Google Analytics also lets you set goals, which can then be tuned to your social media outlets. Essentially you can judge how effective your Facebook Ad or Google Ad campaigns are by seeing what traffic they generate. And you can also tailor your goals section to track specific things related to your social media profiles. For example you can set a goal to monitor how much traffic you get from a specific Facebook ad or a Twitter Tweet.
  • Are visitors bailing from your homepage? Google Analytics tells you your homepage’s bounce rate, the percentage of homepage visitors who never clicked on additional pages. This is key for analyzing your e-commerce vitality. A lot of sites can generate visits, but if you’re not keeping people around and they’re not clicking through to your goods and services, you’re going to have a high bounce rate. If the bounce rate is more than 60 to 70 percent, you have a problem with your landing page, and possibly your marketing strategy. This problem is infecting your entire e-commerce setup and hurting your business. The search terms your visitors are using to find the site tell you whether they’re the people you want. If they are the right type of visitors and they aren’t delving deeper into the site, then the blame goes on the homepage.
  • Are they looking at your product or service pages? Your website is designed to generate sales or interest in your services. So beyond just the bounce rate of the homepage, it’s important to analyze your product pages. If website visitors aren’t looking at the pages that allow this to happen, then either your homepage is not doing its job or (if your bounce rate is not terrible, but your business isn’t being generated) there’s a problem with the product pages themselves. The homepage should be divided into decision-making paths that quickly separate visitors by their interests and lead them to the information they are looking for. The goal is to make the click through process easy and seamless. The customer arrives, finds what they want and goes and gets it.

 

That’s analytics in a brief nutshell. The data that programs like Google Website Analytics gives you can help shed light on problem areas with your e-commerce package. It is easy to use, so don’t be intimidated by the numbers. Take your time learning the program as these numbers are the key to finding out whether your website is effectively generating business.

 

E-Commerce SEO Tips for Merchants [2023 Update]

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The Official Merchant Services Blog once again picks up its thread about the impact 2011’s holiday shopping season is going to have on e-commerce. Previously we gave merchants tips on improving their e-commerce experience for customers. These tips were primarily focused on things merchants can do with their website and their online shopping cart. Today we’re going to offer some tips on improving your site’s Search Engine Optimization (SEO). This is basically the other side of the coin. With the first set of tips the goal was to make it easy for your potential customers to use your site, and buy things from you effectively. With these SEO tips the goal is to make it easy for potential customers to find your web site in the first place.

What is SEO?

SEO

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the visibility of a website or a web page in search engines via the “natural” search results that come up from using the search engine. SEO is absolutely vital to your online business. SEO is what helps the search engines such as Google find your website or your products in whichever marketplace you are using. In general, the earlier (or higher ranked on the search results page), and more frequently a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine’s users. So the basic goal of SEO is to get a web site ranked on the first page.

How to Improve your SEO

Here are a few effective tips from Google itself and its SEO Report Card to help you use best SEO practices and boost traffic to your website or listings:

  • Offer Quality Content and Services

    –– According to Google, interesting websites will increase search engine recognition on their own. The internet is content driven. So the first step in improving your SEO is to make sure you have compelling, consistent content. In fact, here is what the Google SEO gurus have to say about your site’s content: “Creating compelling and useful content will likely influence your website more than any of the other factors discussed here.” Great content is more apt to be shared and linked to, which will help boost your rankings with the search engine results pages, or SERPs.

  • Create more descriptive title tags

    –– Optimized keywords and an effective URL naming structure can help the search engine understand the content of the page better. It is suggested to use a maximum of 60 characters on title tags as an opportunity to tell both users and search engines what the focus of the page is. There’s no need to go past this many characters, as most search engines will display ellipses ( … ) after this limit. Also, search engines may give less weight to words after a certain point.

  • Write Better Anchor Text

    –– What is anchor text? It’s the clickable text that users see as the result of a link and is placed within the anchor tag. This text tells Google and the other search engines, as well as internet users, a little something about the page you are linking to. You should use descriptive, concise text and format links so that they’re easily spotted. Don’t neglect your internal anchor text, either.

  • Create effective URLs

    –– Choose the form of the URL that is easiest to remember as the canonical and be consistent with this canonical form across all products. Think of the most common URL forms visitors are likely to try and then 301 redirect these to the preferred/canonical URL or be sure to use the rel=”canonical” link element if you cannot redirect.

  • Optimize Your Use of Images

    –– In the last blog post, we discussed the importance of using high quality images of your products in your shopping cart and how that helps you make sales. Those same images can help your SEO, if you utilize the text that comes with them properly. You can use a filename along with alt text for images and should take full advantage of both. The content of the alt attribute contains information about your image. Don’t scatter your image files in a bunch of directories and subdirectories, but store them all in a single directory. This will greatly simplify the path to your images. Use commonly supported file types such as PNG, JPEG, GIF and BMP.

The real work here for a successful e-commerce merchant is combining the strategies from the previous blog with the tips presented here. You need to make your site come up on the first page of a google search so customers can find you. Then once they click you need to have an strong, easy to use site so those same customers can make their purchase quickly and hassle-free. All of this leads up to the final submission of the sale, which is where Host Merchant Services steps in and makes the payment processing easy for you and completely worry-free. Let our tips and information help you with the first two steps, and then we’ll handle the processing.