Ecommerce Web Design Blog

Just like major clothing brands are often subject to cheap manufacturers producing look-alike copies of their products complete with logos, there are a number of people who are determined to copy the most successful businesses online without any respect for their intellectual property.

Don't let this put you off opening an online shop. You have plenty of options when it comes to dealing with competitors trying to steal your products, website content and images. Here are just some of the things you can do.

1. Ban their IP from your site or server. Look up their IP address and ask your hosting provider to block them. You can get their IP address from a tool like 'whos online' in the admin section of your site, or a third party tracking tool like your chat or real time tracking. Also ensure that 'hotlink' protection has been enabled by your hosting provider. This stops competitors from linking to your images within their own sites.
   
2. Join a programme like Copyscape. Copyscape scans the Internet for copies of any of your webpages. It will send you an email telling you the exact URL of the pages who have copied you.  You can verify the copying and then write to their hosting provider to force them to remove the content or have the site banned. You can also write to the copiers to order them to cease and desist their copying of your site. If they do not heed your warning you can take legal action.
3. Keep ahead of them. Competitors who spend too much time fixated on what you are doing with your shopping cart today are competing with the past. If you keep doing new things, adding things and improving you will stay ahead. Be a leader not a copier. Work on the search optimisation of your site while they work on what you were doing yesterday.

In case your competitors or copiers don't listen to your warnings you have the ACCC, your legal team and your external solicitors at your disposal if necessary. A friendly 'prompt' from  your legal team or external solicitors is ususally enough to help your copiers see the errors of their ways.  If not your lawyers will know what to do.

Writing for your website is not the same as writing for a print publication. Online you have very limited time to make an impression on your audience. Only writing that is clear, interesting and easy-to-read will get the attention of your potential customers. You also have to be mindful of search engines - you need to ensure that you have the right density of keywords otherwise your page will appear either unimportant or spam to Google. Getting the mix just right is essential.

So how do you choose a good copywriter for your shopping cart website?

The first step in the process is to evaluate the websites of the people or businesses on your shortlist.  Does their website sound like it was written by Australians for the Australian market or by somone with poor language skills? If they can't write for themselves and promote their own business, how can they promote yours? Be careful of sites that do not make sense or appear to use the same word over and over and over for effect. These are the kinds of sites that will eventually get hammered by the search engines for 'keyword stuffing' so stay clear of them or your site could suffer when they come crashing down.

Hiring a professional website copywriter for your shopping cart website can help your website stand out from the crowd, which can be essential in a market that is highly competitive and crowded with competitors selling similar products.  There are plenty of people and international companies claiming to be professional copywriters on the freelance job boards, but if they can really write quality copy, expect to pay top dollar. 

As an experiment for this blog we have hired some freelance copywriters from job boards with a theoretical copywriting exercise for our own website. We will report back in another post when the results are in.

Lessons: What to look for the following when you hire a web copywriter

• Do their writing samples seem interesting an inviting? Would you buy from them?
• Is the writing actually useful to the target audience or does it appear to have been written for search engines rather than people?
• How much do they charge? Is it per-word, per-dollar, or per-article?
  

Osc Works offers website copywriting service for current customers or non-customers alike.