Good examples are all over the place. Play.com, eBuyer and Amazon all do it. Once you’ve gona as far as adding items to your basket and want to checkout, you’re presented with a bar at the top of the page. Usually this bar includes all the steps in the process (basket, delivery, payment, confirm etc), each one greyed out apart from the step you are currently on. Simple and effective.

Customers know how many steps they will have to do to make an order. They know up front how many there is and so will not get frustrated blindly going from step to step. Therefore this would reduce the number of customers “bailing out” and not completing their order.

This week, as I’ve just written my Search Engine Optimisation article, why not try out one of the things I’ve listed there quickly, and see if there’s been any change in your rankings by the end of the week - maybe even try out more than one!

Better Offers
A good example of this is Play.com. Selling DVDs and CDs is a competitive market, and by offering low prices and free delivery they have had huge success. Obviously there are business considerations when reducing costs (I’m not suggesting you don’t make a profit!) so it may not be an option. It does not have to be so drastic though, periodic special offers, discounts on bulk buys, offering discount codes to previous customers. Even if its not much, if its more that your competitors you have the edge.

Competitions
Running competitions on your website is a good way to attract attention, especially if the prize is good. Whether you partner with somebody else to get a prize, or offer a voucher for your store, if its attractive to people you’ll find you will get a lot of entries. Another thing you can do is provide a “send to friend” feature within the competition. So when someone enters they are presented with a number of boxes to send details to their friends.

Running competitions not only gets attention and raises the profile of your site over your competitors, but also gives you a base of email addresses to market products to down the line (make sure they are aware they’ll recieve mails though!).

Be Useful with Blogs/E-Zines
Content is a great way to add value to your website. Starting a blog is a good way to get content online. If you blog about things related to your products, it will tell people you are not just an online shop, but you know what you’re talking about and have a face. It could be product reviews, product “how to” articles, discussions on events within your market or even product announcements as you get new stock in.

Enhance Customer Experience
If visitors enjoy their time on your website they will stay, and come back again. Make your website a nice place to be and offer good features to help your customers. Make your ordering process as simple as possible. Have a help section full of expected questions and answers. Make sure its clear where to find everything. All this helps, and at the end of the day if people don’t like being on your website they’ll look elsewhere.

Some Truth First
Many sites and companies you will find offer services saying they will get you to the top of google. Promises of #1 rankings and lots of traffic from it. All this, frankly, is untrue. They may well get you such rankings, but usually by means frowned upon by Google and other search engines. If you’re caught you’ll be banned or have your rankings punished - as simple as that. You will also find that some of these companies will get you to the top for keywords that are not exactly what you want to be aiming for.

Be The Best
The simple fact is, search engines want to offer users the best service possible. When someone searches for something they want to give to them the best website that is related to what they entered. The best deals or the best advice. Quite simply, if you are at the top of the rankings but your site is not what the user is after (ie they don’t think you are ‘the best’) then they will leave - simple as that, they’ll just go back and try the next result. Therefore the best thing you can do is to ‘be the best’ in your field. Offer the best advice, the best deals and the best website experience. If your site is worth visiting then you’ll see an increase in visits and sales, whether you’re ranked top or not.

Choosing your Keywords
It is worth planning your keywords right from the word go. You’ll want to target maybe 15 or so ‘key phrases’ of two or three words each. Some should be quite general to your field, others more specific and ‘niche’. If you’re struggling to get ket phrases it’s worth using a keyword suggestion tool to spark some ideas.

Content Content Content
You want to sneak these key phrases into your content, page titles and content titles where you can. Try not to go over the top, but add them in where they can go. For example, instead of things like “Welcome to Sparky’s” as a title, try “Welcome to Sparky’s, The online electrical retailer with the best cables on offer” - notice how I got electrical retailer and cables in there without it sounding like they are just there for a search bot - Be descriptive and informative with them.

Content is King on the internet, and the more of it there is, the more a search engine can pick up and use for searches. You want to try and get as much information on your products as you can. Maybe write some articles relating to your field, adding extra value to your site at the same time.

Use Your Page Titles
Page titles are very important. I am talking here about what goes in your <title> tags and appears at the very top of the browser window. When reading a website, search engines value different tags with different importance - title is the most important. Make sure you have a different title for each page, and get the important stuff at the start. A good way to do this is instead of putting “Sparky’s Online Store - Cables” put “Cables - Sparky’s Online Store”, making the word cables to most important thing on the page.

User Your Page Titles
Next down on the HTML tag importance list is header tags: h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, h7. Therefore you want to give each page it’s individual title within a h1 tag, and use the others for subheadings etc, placing your keywords in them where you can.

Meta Tags
Meta Tags are hidden tags in the head of a HTML document that describe a page for search engines to use. These have depleted in their importance over the years as they are open to abuse. It is still worth including a description and keywords tag just in case though.

No to Flash and Informational Imagery
Search engine spiders find flash files difficult to interpret - they are not mere text files like HTML documents. They struggle to access the text within if the even bother at all. Similar can be said to images. If you have text in an image a search engine cannot read it. Make sure you do not have important information in such images or flash movies. With images, make sure you always include an alt=”" attribute describing the content of the image.

Backlinks
Backlinks are a very important part of search engine rankings these days. Search engines such as google will look at all the links it finds on other sites that point to your site, and look at the text that is used to link to it. The more incoming links you have, the more important your site is deemed. Equally, if the page linking to you has lots of incoming links, it will see that as a more important incoming link. It can get a bit complicated to explain, but put simply, the more people linking to you the better.

Good ways to get backlinks can be directories, related sites, blogs, social bookmarking sites or advertising. Remember that links from sites related to your site are far more valuable than ones from unrelated sites, so try and get quality over quantity. It also helps if you get keywords in the link too, instead of a link simply reading the name of your site.

Domain Name
Domain names can also play a part. If you can, it’s worth getting a good one from the word go, and get a keyword in it. For example, www.sparkys-cables.com will do better than just www.sparkys.com.

Search Engine Friendly URLs
Some search engines struggle to read dynamically generated pages - typically with URLs that look something like: www.site.com/index.php?page=1. It is also helpful to be descriptive in the URL too, instead of using an ID to find the page, use a text based descriptive one. You can use mod_rewrite on apache servers (there is a similar thing on windows servers) to rewrite URLs to be friendlier to search engine bots, so you come out with something like www.site.com/page-name/

Well, there you have it, some tips for optimising for search engines. SEO is an ongoing thing, and takes time to get the results you want. Keep at it, try different things out with keywords and keep looking for those backlinks.

Tools for the Job
First off, some handy tools that will help you achieve your goals, free of course.

Text Editor
You’ll need a text editor. I prefer to use one that has code highlighting abilities, and my personal favourite is AceHTML. Nice little editor with toolbars to do lots of different things. I don’t use any of them myself, but you may find that they useful shortcuts sometimes.

FTP Client
Next up, an FTP client. My suggestion, again from the makers of AceHTML - AceFTP. Again it’s freeware and can also integrate with ActHTML to speed things up.

Browsers
I would suggest using Firefox for development work, as there are a few add ons (see below) that will help you a lot. It is sensible to have different browsers for testing too, so go ahead and get Netscape and Opera too, and if you have a mac to hand grab Firefox for mac as well (and of course Safari).

As for add ons, there are a lot of extensions for Firefox, and I suggest installing the following;

The Web Developer Toolbar
This is invaluable. It will do so many jobs and helpful things for you, like putting boxes around elements, turning css and things off, showing ids and classes, providing information on forms and page sizes. The list is almost endless.

Firebug
This great little tool allows you to examine the DOM at a glance, and also helps with Javascript debugging.

Adsense Notifier
This one is only if you have Adsense on your site really, it just sits at the bottom of your screen telling you todays earnings/impressions/clicks etc. Great to check at a glance.

Clean Code
OK on to the actual code. Here are a few tips for you to keep in mind.

Keeping the code as clean as possible - only using what you need is essential. Rather than having tables or transparent spacer gifs positioning things you should use CSS to give elements padding and margins instead. A good tip is to place the following code at the top of your CSS file:

* {
padding: 0;
margin: 0;
}

This will set everything to have no padding or margin before you begin. This gives you a level playing field as some browsers have different defaults as standard.

When writing the code, imagine you are writing a word document. So obviously the title of the page will be in a <h1> tag, and paragraphs will be in <p> tags. You want to give your content this kind of hierarchy so it reads properly on unstyled pages and text only browsers (Mobile Phones too). It will also help with Search Engine Optimisation (see below).

Try and keep all your styles separate from your HTML. You want to have a master CSS file with everything in, and not cluttered in with the HTML or at the top of the file.

This kind of thing could go on for a while, so I feel a more detailed article on coding an example page would suffice - watch this space!

Accessibility
The point above about using the proper tags where they should be used applies here to. This allows the pages to be accessible to unstyled browsers (and search engine spiders) plus makes it easier on screen readers.

A good tip on font sizes, you should not be using exact sizes for text (for example, pt or px). Doing so means some browsers (IE) cannot enlarge the text for anyone who wishes to do so. If you use the unit ‘em’ they will be able to. When working with ems you will want to set the default to the same as 10px:

body {
font-size: 62.5%;
}

This will set 1em to be equal to 10px, and so 1.1em will be equal to 11px and so on.

Search Engine Friendliness
My other article on Search Engine Optimisation goes into more depth, but I think it is worth re-iterating here. Take care with your text, especially on product detail pages. A few extra minutes spent getting the right keywords in place without it sounding like you’re spamming will pay off in the long run. You also want to be giving each page (expecially product detail pages) unique page titles in the <title> tags and <h1> tags.

See my SEO article for more.

Optimising Images
This can make a difference too. Good quality product photos give a better impression for users. If you get them from the manufacturer you may be blessed with profession photography, but good results can be achieved with a digital camera, a daylight bulb (available from hardware stores or hobby shops) and a plain white backdrop. Simple and cheap to set up and you’ll have decent looking photography. Furthermore you can play around with the levels, contrast and colours in photo packages such as Photoshop.

When saving images for use on your site there are some things you should consider too. You want your image to be set at 72dpi and usually no larger than 500-600 pixels wide (maybe around 100-200 pixels for thumbnails). If you have Photoshop you can use the “Save for Web” facility and play around with the compression with JPEGs and GIFs. The smaller you can get a file without losing quality the better.

Well there we have some tips for building a XHTML/CSS compliant store. If you have any of your own please do share them below.

1. PPC (AdWords, YPN etc)
Probably the most effective way to market your site is through contextual PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising. Programs such as Google AdWords and Yahoo Publisher Network. With PPC advertising you pay a certain amount for every click on your link, but because it is contextual it is targetted to people actively searching for your keywords. The amount you pay depends greatly on how competitive your market is, but if you make your targetted keywords more specific (maybe regional or specific products) you’ll find the cost might come down. I’ll be covering these programs in more detail in a future article.

2. Price Comparison Sites
Price comparison website such as shopping.com and Shopzila (off the top of my head - there are a lot of them out there) is another option. Again with these services you are usually paying per click and attracting people actively searching for your products. You have to be careful with your pricing down this route however as if you’re more expensive than competitors you won’t get many clickthroughs.

3. Regular Advertising
In some cases other online advertising methods may be quite successful. Banner advertising sees a low percentage of clicks these days, but there are other options such as text link advertising or even video ads.

4. Search Engine Optimisation
This one should go without saying, but it goes unnoticed a lot. Optimising your pages and writing your content carefully considering the keywords you want to be targetting is a step that costs little or nothing at all, and if you get it right you’ll see hundreds of visitors coming from search engines every day. At the end of the day “Content is King” - you should have as much information about each product as you can write, and you could even consider including other pages offering articles that a rich in keywords and linking through to products or sections. See my Search Engine Optimisation article for more details.

5. Affiliate System
Having an affiliate system is one of the best ways to get selling products. People join and become an affiliate for your products, you provide them with banners and links for them to put on their websites, and for ever sale they bring you give them a percentage of the cost. With an affiliate system you are effectively getting other people to do the selling for you and providing you with customers, and you don’t have to pay them anything until you have the money from their sales. There are many sites that will let you run an affiliate program, although some will come with a cost. There is no harm in setting one up yourself however, and many eCommerce packages come with the functionality built in.

6. Mailing List
Having a mailing list or newsletter on your website is a good marketing tool. The recipients will either be previous customers, or visitors who have joined up willingly. You know the recipients will be interested in your products as they have asked you to send them information about them. A well constructed newsletter can be very effective in bringing more sales. There are some services out there that will let you send newletters for next to nothing, my recommendation would be Mail Chimp. Equally, many eCommerce packages will come with a newsletter feature.

7. Word of Mouth
Word of Mouth can be underestimated. There is common thinking that if someone likes your product, they’ll tell their friends and colleagues about them. While this might be true sometimes, its worth giving them a helping hand. Having an “Email to Friend” feature is one example of this, it’s right there in front of them to quickly send information about a product to someone before they forget about it. Other ways could include using branded eCards on special occasions or running competitions.

8. Blogs
Blogs are all the rage (heck you’re reading one now!) and it is likely there is a blog out there talking about your market. Getting such bloggers to post about your products, maybe reviewing them, is a surefire way to get their readers directed to your online store.

9. Signatures
This is an old favourite. Signatures in emails, forum posts and anywhere else you may be posting information. Generally, if you have something genuinely interesting and valuable to say people are likely to click on your signature links.

10. Freebies
Finally, this is common with software these days, offering a free version of your product(s) with reduced features, or free trials of them that expire after a set time limit will get more people interested. It may also open up other avenues to market (in the case of software there are a number of directories just listing free software downloads).

Well there we have it, my top 10 suggestions. It is by no means a definitive list, if you have any suggestions or think I’ve missed something feel free to post a comment letting me know.

Traditionally websites have been coded using HTML - a language intended to be used for displaying simple data. Over time people have found ways to make it do more interesting things and make sites much more visually appealing. In doing so, code became bloated, poorly accessible and greatly unnecessary. With the introduction of CSS and XHTML standards, it is now possible to leave this behind. Below are a number of advantages to switch to (or indeed start out with) these modern standards.

Cleaner Code
In the past HTML site were largely based around tables. Tables within tables within tables - which becomes very complex to look at in your text editor, and it’s the same story for browsers trying to interpret it. You would find blank images here and there creating space on the page where needed. It’s not a pretty picture. XHTML/CSS code is much simpler. The styling is separated out and controlled totally by CSS, meaning there is nothing cluttering up your HTML. Tables aren’t required to make things display correctly, and the end result is code that is a lot leaner, quicker and easier to work with.

Faster Loading Times
XHTML and CSS is much leaner that HTML was previously. Less code is needed to make things work, and browsers can interpret the code much quicker. Ironically as connection speeds increase (as broadband becomes commonplace in homes) websites are getting smaller in size. This is great news for those still on slow connections though, as they will notice a big increase in the loading time of your site. Attention spans are shot with internet users, if your site doesn’t load for a few seconds you’ll be losing potential customers!

Accessibility
XHTML/CSS pages are a lot more accessible to people with disabilities or limitations. Because there is no unnecessary code, software such as screen readers (commonly used by users with visual impairment) can understand your page better and relay the content back. Users with small screens (such as PDAs) or text only browsers (common on linux and search engine spiders) can access your content easily.

Search Engine Friendly
One major advantage of XHTML and CSS is the benefits for search engines. They are smaller, easier to understand, and quicker for them to look through. Search Engine Spiders love XHTML/CSS sites. Using code properly will help your rankings considerably too. See my SEO article for more on this.

Faster Development
You will also find that developing your site will be quicker too. Because the code is cleaner it is much easier to put together to begin with (as there is less to write). Also, when coming back to it to change or fix things, there is less of it to look through and find what you need.

Bragging Rights
Finally, you have put in the effort to make your site compliant and accessible. Many sites proudly place a link to validators confirming that they are using compliant code, and you’ll find that some visitors will have more respect for you doing so.

Resources
w3c Validators
w3schools
SitePoint Tutorials

Before I begin I will add that I do not have any affiliations with the sites and it reflects my personal views. I’ll neither be earning commissions or needlessly slating websites.

This week’s good example:
ebuyer.com
Reasons:
Although not the best design in the world it does it’s job. I particularly like the dropdown menu they added recently as it cleans the site up a great deal. The layout could do with some tweaking here and there, but what I like most about the site is the ordering process. It is nice and easy to follow, the quick cart doesn’t get overloaded and delivery tracking is integrated into their website and not external. I also like how you pick a delivery date rather than a “service” - makes more sense to a user.

This week’s bad example:
Cool Mini Or Not Shop
Reasons:
Regular readers may know I am a collector of wargames figures and this site is a regular stop off for me. For a start they don’t make a big shout about it on the rest of the site. Second, they are using the JShop shopping cart package - I knew this within 2 seconds as the default style is still in place (bar the header). Having worked with JShop before it is a very poor default layout (event though the back end is a very powerful bit of kit), bad HTML, hard on the eye and difficult to follow. This place could do with a little bit of time spent on it’s design.

Any suggestions for a good or bad example? Leave a comment and I’ll check them out.

Off The Shelf Package

With an off the shelf solution the hard work is done for you. They come with many features and have usually been tested by all the users who have used them before. Installation is usually straight-forward and quick, giving you a working online store within minutes. This will save you a lot of time and usually money too.

Before getting too excited however, there can be complexities. Firstly, you will no doubt want to change the default template to your own custom design to suit your needs. Some packages can be extremely complex when it comes to editing templates, some will be limited a great deal as to what you can change, and some will come with template coding languages built in giving you an extra learning curve to deal with. It’s essential you have a good look at the templating abilities of a package before comitting to it. See what you can do, what you can’t do, and what’s going to be difficult.

Secondly, packages will be limited somewhat in what features they offer you. If there is a feature you really want to include, but is not available with your chosen package, you may run into difficulties editing the package’s code and extending it to suit your needs - or it may not even be possible! Equally they may offer a lot more than you want to have. Be sure to check that a package has all the features you need, the ability to disable features you don’t want, and see how easy it is to add your own features or “extensions” if you want or need to.

Bespoke Solution

Your other option is a fully bespoke solution just for you. Whether you develop it yourself or commission development company, you can be sure it will fill your needs, look how you want it to look and operate just how you want it to.

There are disadvantages though. Custom solutions take time to develop, and therefore money too. If you commission the work you will find the cost a great deal higher than an off the shelf package. There may also be some security issues if it is not thoroughly and vigorously tested - as at the end of the day you will be dealing with people’s personal information and taking payments (either on your own server or via a payment gateway), you do not want to have to deal with missing orders and angry customers!

What Should I Go For?

Your best bet is to ask yourself if you have the budget for a custom solution? (Or indeed the ability and time). If you do not then an off the shelf package is the only option really. Even if you think you do need a custom solution, I would take a look at the software available anyway to see what it offers. A quick search on google and a poke around hotscripts.com should provide you with plenty to whet your appetite.

Personally I think the majority of store owners are better off working with an off the shelf package. Even though I am yet to find one that I can say is a great product, I don’t think it’s worth re-inventing the wheel with your own solution if you can pick up a package that already does it immediately.

In the past this site has served as a portfolio of my work more than anything. While it will still do so, I hope it will now become a place that is based around my writings more. The tutorials section contains some tutorials written quite some time back, and I hope to expand on these too.

The focus will not just be in eCommerce, but giving myself this more direct topic will help me write regularly on this topic. There will of course be articles on usability, CSS and modern web technologies - just with an eCommerce twist.