Ecommerce Web Design Blog

No matter how hard you work on your business, sometimes you have one of those days. Where everything that can go wrong does go wrong and you are at the end of your tether.  When everyone around you is negative. When you have customers screaming at you. When suppliers let you down. If you are running a small business, a day like that could really knock your confidence.  Unless you are prepared with some basic stress management techniques.

One of the advantages of running an ecommerce website compared to a retail store is that when you have a day like this - you can just turn off your computer for a while and take a break. You can't just shut your doors in a retail shop!

When everything seems to go wrong, it's really important to take a step back and take a break.  Calm down. If customers are on your back and you are under a huge amount of stress, it is usually better to take a break from your computer and calm down. Otherwise your blood pressure will go up and your productivity will go down.

Some stress relief tips for handling stressful days like this  are:

• If you have a favourite pass-time that involves fresh air then take advantage of it. Play squash if you're a sportsperson.  Go for a short walk if you're not. If you're running a home business, any change in your day could help you. Go to the supermarket for a half hour or even a simple task like watering the garden, playing with your cat or hanging out washing could help. The key is taking your mind off your stressful situation so you can recharge and refocus. It's like a mini holiday.
  
• On stressful days, take lots of breaks. Don't work for more than an hour without taking a break - even for five minutes.
• Keep your home office tidy. If you are under stress and have to find a piece of paper in a hurry, you'll be put under more stress if you can't find it when you need it. Come up with a filing system that works for you and stick to it. Don't let bad habits overcome you.
• When you respond to customers give them the facts, be polite and professional and don't lose your cool. Treat them how you would want to be treated. Remember, it's okay to say 'no' if you have to.
  
• Set small goals and reward yourself when you achieve them. Break your day down into parts with goals that you know you can achieve. This keeps you motivated even under stress.
• Keep youself healty. A healthy body will have a stronger immune system that will help you cope better with stress.  Try to get enough sleep every night and always eat breakfast - even when in a rush.
• Have some relaxation techniques at your disposal - for example yoga or meditation
• Most of all: be prepared for days like these. Everyone will have them at one time or another so if you are prepared there are no surprises. Make a schedule for your day and stick to it. If something goes wrong, stay calm and write down what has happened and how you will deal with it. Lists are a hugely useful tool.

When your business day is over, turn off your computer, change your clothes, take a shower and try to do something completely unrelated to your business. Your business is not going anywhere. You will thank yourself that you did.

 

 

If a hacker tries to gain access to your website or claims that they have, what can you do? Who can you report it to? Hacking is a very serious computer crime so there are a number of places you can go from your hosting provider to the FBI to attempt to trace the hackers and have them stopped.

First, report the hacking attempt to your website hosting provider.  They will be able to trace the activity of the hacker on your server and will probably be able to block them from returning to your site, and possibly the entire server. They may also be able to reverse-lookup the IP address of the hacker and tell you what Internet Service Provider they are using. You can then write to the ISP and report them there. Most ISPs and hosting companies have an 'Abuse' email address or contact form to report inappropriate behaviour of their customers.

Next, search for the hackers name on Google.  This is a fantastic resource for you as many hackers publish their hacks as trophys.  Visit these hack sites and see what you can find out about the hacker who is attempting to infiltrate you. If you find a website for the hacker you can then do a number of things:

• Look up the domain name of the hacker on a website like whois.sc. This will give you a lot of information about who registered the domain name and what company it was registered with.  If the details are fake or incomplete, this is often against domain registration rules in most countries so you may be able to report them for inappropriate domain name use.  At a minimum this will help you trace them as their domain name provider will ask them to update their details, or even better they may be penalised for inappropriate details.
• A whois lookup will usually be able to also tell you who the hosting provider of the website is. You can then write to the hosting provider and inform them that one of their customers is using their account for hacking - a serious crime that most hosting providers will terminate an account for if it can be proven to be true.
• You can also report the hacker to the police. The Federal Police in Australia have a computer crime division with contacts in many countries of the world. If you have actually been hacked or defrauded online, it is a crime against your business and therefore a crime in Australia.
• Report the site to Google so their site is not indexed
• If the crime is international or your website is on a US-based server, you can also report your crime directly to the FBI computer crime website. They have a detailed online form for you to fill out and take every computer crime report very seriously.

Preventing crime: what can you do?
Given the profitability of shopping carts , they can be a target for computer criminals if they are not kept in a secure and PCI DSS complaint environment. Take advantage of any website tracking software that monitors the visitors to your site in real time (if your shopping cart or website provider offers such a service). 

Keep your own computer secure too. Make sure you have up-to-date virus protection and anti-spyware software installed so hackers can't track you logging into the administration section of your shopping cart website and have a firewall installed if you have one.

If you choose a reputable ecommerce website provider who takes security seriously and you know what to do if someone attempts to hack you.

If you are looking to buy an ecommerce website to start an online shop, you may have been trying to decide what ecommerce features are best for you. If you looked at some of our previous posts, you may have been visiting your competitor's websites and those of other online shops that you like to shop at.

There's another place you can go to help determine what ecommerce features you can choose. Review sites.

Finding a shopping cart software review website that covers Australia is very rare, and one that includes a comprehensive selection of the top carts available even rarer. But you can take advantage of US and other international shopping cart software review sites to see the features that people trade off, get tips from other buyers and look at reviews of other carts. This gives you some insight into what you should be looking for when you contact Australian-based suppliers.

One best shopping cart review site that you may wish to consider is Shopping Cart Reviews.  If you look at the carts that receive top 4-5 star ratings you will see a number of features are considered important by the reviewers of those site. Some of the key ecommerce features they consider important are (we have all of these):

• No product limits
• Gift vouchers
• Discount coupons
• Wish lists
• Customer registration
• Digital goods (downloadable products)
• Product options (also called attributes or variations)
• Site search
• Search engine friendly
• Affiliates programme
• Optional product reviews
• Newsletters
• Content management
• Design features (customisable)
• Bulk uploading
• Great support
• Reports

We are pleased to say that yes, if ozCart was a cart sold by Americans and not Australians, we are very confident that our feature set would have us right at the top of their ratings!

Whatever you want to sell online, if you want the best return on your shopping cart investment, you will need to get noticed by the search engines. So how do you go about promoting your ecommerce website?

Firstly, make sure you have chosen a shopping cart provider that allows you to set the title and search engine 'meta tags' for your website's home page.  The best title and meta description for you will depend on your industry, what your customers search for and what your competitors do.

If changing the title and "meta tags" can't be done by you in the admin section of your website, make sure (before you buy your shopping cart) that their support team can do it for you.  Having a website title that includes the keywords your customers will be searching for can play a critical part in getting noticed by the search engines.

What are Meta Tags, Titles and Search Engine Keywords?

You may have read the last paragraph and be wondering what all the jargon means - words like 'meta tags', 'primary keywords', 'title'. It may help to have a quick overview of how search engines index websites (skip to the next section if you are already familiar with what these terms mean).

When someone puts a search term into a search engine like Google, the search engine attempts to return the most relevant results to the person searching. It looks in its own pre-created indexes to find the pages that have the best fit for that search term as well as the overall popularity of that page or site (usually measured by the number of quality links to that website).

The title of the page is what appears in the top bar of Internet Explorer or Firefox and is something that search engines weight heavily in returning results to customers - after all, a page's title describes the main content of that page.

Meta tags and meta descriptions are content hidden into the top part of each web page. They tell the search engines what content is on the page which helps them compile an accurate index.  Some shopping carts like ozCart allow you to set separate title, meta tags and meta descriptions for each product as well as each category in your store.  Search engines like Google often display the meta descriptions when they return results to people who search for a particular term (or keyword).

Getting noticed by search engines

With well defined meta tags, descriptions and titles for each of your pages, a nice tidy ('Search Engine Friendly') urls in the address bar of your browser can also be useful for indexing of your pages and making them memorable to your customers.  For example, both search engines and people will find it easier to use a url like http://www.yourshop.com.au/jewellery compared to http://www.yourshop.com.au/index.php?category_options=all&sort=3&category_id=820119.  

Once your title, meta tags and urls are under control, look at the text you have one each page. Does it use the search engine terms (keywords) your customers will be using to look for the products you sell? If not, edit your product descriptions appropriately. If your shopping cart allows you to have category descriptions then use them too.

You will also need to gather lots of useful links. Think about ways you can get credible, useful websites with good integrity to 'vote' for you by linking to you.  One place to start is with directories, but link exchanges, 'social bookmarks' (links from places like digg or facebook) are also useful options for you.

As we move into 2009, one of your new year's resolutions may have been to start the online business you have been planning for some time.  One of the key questions you will face as you start an online whop is what shopping cart software to use.  Many of the carts available in Australia tout many seemingly powerful and useful features, so how do you decide what ecommerce features will be right for your business?

Our advice to you is to try them out.  Get a piece of paper and visit the websites of your competitors. Shop around their categories and get a feel for how their pages are presented and whether as a customer you would find it easy to use their site.  How does their website design look? Would you put products in your cart? If you do put products in the cart is it easy to do? Try a few of your competitor's sites and then shop online at your favourite online shops to see how things are done in other industries. Make sure you write down the things that you particualarly like and don't. This will help you compile your list.

Once you have reviewed other shopping cart sites, try to compile a list of the 5 most important features for you.  With so many features to choose from, it will be hard to choose only 5, but this will help you compile your shortlist of websites to look at in more detail.  To help you further with your list, here is a list of some of the most commonly requested features by our customers:

• Customised web designs
• The ability to add zoomed in or enlarged product images
• Your own affiliate programme
• Wish lists
• A range of product payment methods like bank transfer, gateways (like eWay or ANZ eGate)
• A secure payment environment that meets Visa and MasterCard's PCI DSS compliance security standards