Authority SEO Offers

1. Web Design
2. Programmer and store customization
3. SEO solutions
4. Complete online store set up

Zen Cart before any customization offers essential aspects like SEO for all product pages, web based admin for processing orders, complete shopping cart, multiple ways to create sales and discounts, multiple options for payment checkout, and more.

Featured Zen Cart Store – NaturesOrganicMarket.com

Natures Organic Market uses the Zen Cart platform to handle their online business of selling organic and Green products.  With Zen Cart you have the ability to turn your online store into any look and feel you want.  The PHP files allow for customization of any of the new features business owners are looking for.

Key Features

1. Unlimited category structure
2. No need for web developer to change out promotional banners
3. Customized product pages with big “Add to Cart” button
4. Featuring on sale items, customers who also bought items, and best sellers
5. Article content management system

Zen Cart can be built to handle thousands of products or a boutique store of just a few.  Using a complete online solution offers  benefits of that are subtle though highly effective from displaying shopping cart totals, showing recently purchased items for returning customers, displaying percentage off products, and more.

One of the main benefits of using Authority SEO to develop your Zen Cart store is that all aspects of the online store are created with effective Internet marketing and search engine optimization strategies.  You won’t have to build your online store only now figure out how to market it on the web.  Authority SEO works with you to develop your store around the best ways to drive targeted traffic that generate sales for your new online store.

Contact Authority SEO About Zen Cart Web Development, SEO, and Website Design

Please, fill out the form or call (866) 610-1655

So with that in mind here are some tips to make your eCommerce site more likely to convert sales… TRUST 1. First of all, don’t build your own website, unless you are already a web designer, don’t try to take the time to learn how to design a website. There are  people who spend every day doing that they are going to be better than you at doing. Building a website incorrectly can hurt your chances of ranking in the search engines and putting up a “homemade” looking site can hurt your trust factor. Authority SEO has a team of website designers to taylor a website to your needs.  It takes an investment, but one that will yield more sales and a stronger business.

2. There are some elements you can easily add to your site that will instantly make you appear more trustworthy. An 800 number in the header. This gives the feel that you are a bigger company, even if you’re running it from your kitchen table. And people often assume that a “bigger” company is a “safer” company, and they’ll want to buy from you. A trust seal and credit card logos. Again this gives the look and feel of being a bigger professional company online. Also people often assume that if you have these elements then other people are buying from you too. The credit card logos instill trust. Essentially, you’re borrowing trust from the credit card companies.  Each of these elements has been tested and by adding them to your site and you will see your conversions increase.

BEST PRICE: You’ll have more success selling online if you’re selling what people are already buying. But that means you’ll also be selling what other websites are selling. So when your customers begin price-shopping, how do you compete without cutting your prices?  Position your products as unique with unique content.  Most marketers make this mistake. They take the photo and description provided by the supplier and use them as is. If instead you’ll take a little extra time, it’ll pay off in huge dividends. Start by changing the stock photo. Test different photos. Avoid using the same photo everyone else is using. Also re-write the descpription so it’s unique. You can even give your products a unique name so that when people price shop products from your site, they won’t find any other products with the same name.

Don’t give away your merchandise. Trying to be the cheapest source rarely works for long.  Every new website owner thinks I’ll get the customer in with the lowest price and raise them later. There are millions of websites that have tried this tactic and they are all out of business now. Also there will always be someone else to come along who’s willing to sell the same items cheaper than you. Instead try bundling related items into greater bargains for your prospects. Doing this not only allows you to set the price you want, it also makes your offer unique. These are just a few tips for making your eCommerce site more profitable. But there are literally dozens of different ways, just like this, that you can use to have a higher converting site.  Authority SEO is constantly working to help sites increase their conversion ration and generate more revenue.

When evaluating shopping comparison websites for e-commerce it is important understand not only clicks though how though clicks convert to sales and eventually calculate a return on investment.  What you will find often that different shopping comparison sites offer different value for your products and each one has specific ways to optimize the campaign.

Authority SEO works with clients to track the exact ROI for each different shopping portal that is used.  This allows for better decision making on budgets and which websites to continue doing business with.

Top 10 Shopping Comparison Sites for E-Commerce

1. Google Shopping
2. Shopzilla
3. Nextag
4. Pricegrabber
5. Bing Cashback
6. Amazon Product Ads
7. Become
8. Smarter
9. Pronto

This is where affiliate marketing comes in. Affiliate marketing is a pay on performance system to where you only pay the advertiser if they make a sale for you. What a great system. You only spend money when you make money. I know what your saying great sign me up!  Well it’s not easy. There are many affiliate marketing programs out there and many are good and some are not.

The affiliate marketing program works like this. Publishers join the network and will drive traffic to your site. When a visitor visits their site and clicks through to your site a tracking cookie is placed on their computer and it can last for a duration that you decide. Which means that if the visitor buy anything from your site in that preset amount of time you have to pay a commission to the affiliate.

Sounds good? Well it is but as with anything there are people who learn to take advantage of the system. Some of the pitfalls are when publishers place fake orders on your site and get a commission and then you find out the credit card was stolen or no good. Another problem is orders that get canceled or returned, you have to go back in and cancel the order in the affiliate system and get your money refunded. You only have a week or two to do that.

Just signing up with a affiliate program does nothing. You will be competing against 1000′s of other website owners and you have to market yourself to the publishers. You have to to set up a data feed, create god graphics, and banners, write good copy for you affiliate page, create coupons for affiliates to drive more traffic, and the list goes on and on.

Doesn’t soud so great now does it. Well this is where Authority SEO comes in. Authority SEO is a affiliate program manager and will handle all of the above mentioned tasks and protect you from the problems associated with affiliate programs. Call us today to get information on setting up your affiliate program.

Videos are one Ecommerce trend you could implement without any tech knowledge

For the purpose of this post though we are looking at Ecommerce website store trends which are going to demonstrate more professionalism and hopefully work to convert more visitors to sales.  The goal of these trends are to increase conversion percentage though these are not listed as tested ways to increase conversions, simply trends in where online stores are going.

3 Ecommerce Website Store Trends

1. Videos: with the use of embed codes videos are easy to add to your website.  Videos offer the visitor greater access to what your products or services offer.  Also, videos increase time on the site which Google tracks and uses as a way to determine if people are liking your website.  Load your video onto a any of the video sites and then copy and paste the embed code into your website.  I personally really like Vimeo.com which has professional options that you can customize into your look and feel.
2. Content Sliders: content sliders are the carousels that websites use to showcase certain products with photos and descriptions that visitors can rotate through.  Content sliders increase the tech “know how” which in turns increases the web visitors confidence that your online store is professional.
3. Go Large: if you have noticed big is in.  Large product images, big banners, gigantic font, and so on is the latest trend in Ecommerce websites.  More people now have larger screen sizes and better updated browsers can handle the load times.  All of these factors allow bigger to be better.  Larger images and text draw the eyes to where you want them and are easier to read.  You have 3-5 seconds to grab your visitor into staying.  Going large makes that job easier for people to instantly understand what your website is about.

To translate your store you have to do more than Google translator

Google has a feature called Google Translator that will translate any web page into your language.  This sounds good though as you know not everything translates perfectly from language to language.

For those websites that want to capture non English speaking customers than you want to think about in terms of a commitment to making your website available for those non English speaking customers than just a quick fix.

5 Tips for Translating your Ecommerce Website

1. Rephrase: phrases mean different things in different languages.  You want to take the time to find out how different cultures call things differently.  For example if you are selling pocket knives you may call them folding knives in Spanish.
2. Translation Sheet: make a list of common terms used on your website, for example “On Sale.”  You many use this term hundreds to thousands of times throughout your website though you only want to pay to have it translated once.
3. Hire a Real Person: you will find that if you use a program to translate your website there will be all sorts of errors which you don’t even know about because you don’t speak the language.  You will make the money back in conversions and more sales if you hire a professional translator to match what you want to say into the right phrase in the new language.
4. Translation Memory: you can get a software program to track already translated terms and phrases.  This way you don’t have to hire a translator or a foreign language writer every time you add a new product.
5. Review: this works for your website in English as well.  It is vital that you review and look over your translated sections of your website.  You may have to hire a professional to do this.  Look for broken links not just errors in the text.

If you haven’t spent time on your conversion percentage, now is the time

Increasing sales through conversion percentage is always important though it can be even more important with the holiday season approaching.  Ecommerce websites need to have everything in place months before the holiday season to make sure all the bugs are out.  You don’t want to be making changes to your website the day before Cyber Monday.

3 Ecommerce Website Upgrades that Increase Sales

1. Perpetual shopping carts: there are many different versions of perpetual shopping carts based on the company you chose.  The idea is the same though that a dynamic photo of items added to your shopping cart are displayed for the visitor.  This a visual reminder that there are items in their shopping cart and decreases shopping cart abandonment.  You can also have price and shipping costs displayed with the photo.
2. Internal site search: hopefully your ecommerce website has a site search capability which allows visitors to search your site for the exact products or items they are looking for.  Customers consistently prefer site search over using your category navigation, especially if they know what they want.  You can optimize your site search to display items that are expiring first, largest profit margins first, or any other format that would optimize your ability to promote or move inventory.
3. Better product pages: when is the last time you looked at the display page for your products.  Enhanced displays to offer more photos, details, and maybe even videos can increase the percentage of web visitors who purchase.  It is important that these items flow and don’t clutter up the page.  You can also have the most vital information with a large add to cart button “above the fold” while allowing those that want more info to find it by scrolling down on the page.  Adding more photo options is an easy way to increase the display of your product pages.

Having your entire team understand how they can play a role in your SEO can pay huge dividends with extra links and content for your business

5 Ecommerce Tips You Can Implement Today

1. Google Alerts: Google Alerts is a free service that sends email alerts anytime a keyword of your choosing is indexed by Google including blogs, news, and organic results.  You can use this tool in two ways.  First, you can track any reference of your company online so you know what people are saying about you.  Second, you can track major keywords that your team is working on so you will know anytime Google has indexed that keyword with reference to your website.
2. Keyword Research: Many companies don’t spend the time doing keyword research to discover all of the different keyword phrases people are using to search for your respected business.  For every major keyword relevant to your business there are at least a thousand different keyword phrases using your major keyword that people are typing into search engines right now.
3. Security: As your website grows so does your need for added security.  Do you know why Apple computers have so few viruses, because 98% of people use PCs.  Hackers go where the action is.  When you are effective with your SEO then you will become a target for hackers, so keeping up to date with all security protocols becomes vital.  Even Twitter was hacked and broke down for a few hours just a week ago.
4. Coordinate: Does your entire team know what pages on your site your SEO team is focusing on and what keywords.  Many important factors that will enhance your rankings can come from other parts of your team who can get high quality links from the relationships they are creating.  For example, your sales team understanding that links are important can work out adding a link to your website from a new vendor which can have tremendous power, and a link like that an SEO expert has no access to.
5. Promotion: Add features to your website that allow for you to easy change out promotions and upcoming events.  Many websites have static header graphics and right/ left side borders.  By making certain key areas editable for promotions you can promote specific sales instantly throughout your website including holiday specials as the season grows near.

Unfortunately, the Payment Card Industry holds all the power and your website will comply with their standards or you won’t be able to charge credit cards on your online store.

The following are the twelve steps you need to do with your website to make sure that you comply with all regulations.  By already getting this list down can save you time and headaches instead of having the merchant credit card processing company tell you that you need them.

12 Steps to be PCI Compliant and Process Credit Cards

1. Firewall: you will need a firewall in place that protects cardholder data
2. Passwords: all passwords must be changed to unique phrases and no default software passwords
3. Stored info: where you store the card holder data most be protected from hackers
4. Encryption: you will need a SSL certificate which encrypts the data being processed
5. Anti-Virus: you will need to have and keep updated anti-virus software
6. Secure system: your entire system needs to maintained and updated
7. Restrict access: you will have to cardholder data visible to restricted access
8. Physical access: there can be no physical access to credit card holder’s information
9. ID: each order and customer needs to have an unique identifying number
10. Monitor: your network needs to be monitored to who has accessed the card holder’s information
11. Testing: you most have a protocol in place that regularly tests security systems
12. Policy: your policy on how you utilize card holder information has to be visible on your website.  Usually placed in footer.

You can also do the math to realize that if you could move the needle to a consistent 3% what that would do to your revenue stream.  Many online stores are always looking at how they get more traffic though are not spending the same energy on how they can retain more customers and increase their conversion percentage.  There is one fool proof way to increase conversion percentage and that is to lower prices or have a sale.  I would warn you though as this may give you the instant satisfaction of increased conversions in the short term; it could hurt more than you know in the long term.

When you use price to drive customers than having the lowest price will always have to be your priority.  What happens when the website next to you lowers their price?  Are you going to match him/ her and get into a price war.  No one wins in a price war.  You could say the customer does though price wars run companies out of business, reduce service, and when companies go out of business less competition means higher prices than before.

As tempting as it is to generate instant revenue by dropping your prices I would recommend taking a pause and rethinking your brand position and marketing strategy.  First, think about companies that you like.  Do you typically go to them to purchase their genre of items without price shopping?  The answer is you probably have a few companies that you like for different reason that far exceed price.  Understanding what makes these companies different is a step in how you can differentiate yourself from the competition.

There are more than one way to increase conversion rates.  Take time on your site to see if the information is easy to follow on your website, are you offering videos and photos to support product info, and increase specific content that supports a person’s buying decision.

There are many ways to boost your conversion rates. For example, you could spend your time optimizing the usability of your site, personalizing its content to users using segmentation strategies, or make long-term investments in branding. These are marketing strategies that complement and enhance your existing business strategy.

One essential strategy you need to implore is the use of analytics on your website.  Google Analytics is a free service and I have yet to see a paid service deliver more.  With Google Analytics you can create funnels which shows your checkout process.  On one particular client’s website we found that people were leaving their site during a questionnaire form in their process of signing up for a membership.  We were only able to see this with the use of Google Analytics funnel tracking.  We then moved the questionnaire to after people had officially paid for their membership and conversions increased by 300%.  You would be amazed at how simple things in your checkout process could be root of your trouble with conversions.