• Posted by Melanie
• 06 January 2010
• So you want to be a Shop Owner Series, Store Development

Ugh!

I guess one of the most disappointing things we deal with in our business is the "ugly" or "darkside" of how others deliver web services. There is not a single day that goes by where some website owner doesn't contact us with issues related to the development, design or even ownership of their site. Everything from broken promises and deceit to outright performance issues send these customers hunting for a "new webmaster".

We have dealt with some very disheartening issues for our clients. They call and need to move their site to proper hosting and can't because they don't have access, they find they do not own their domain registration, they have been locked out of and charged for GPL/free built in software functionality or their webmaster flew the coop.

While these issues do pain me, I have decided that all we can do is provide quality, honesty and transparency in our own business. So to that end, I am providing prospective new website owners the following list of tips and precautions before choosing a designer/developer and beginning a website project.

1. NEVER, EVER let a designer register your domain in his/her name. If this is how they insist on doing business, then find a professional.
2. Make sure you have full access to your hosting services, including support. If they want to host you in their account, then insist that you obtain your own hosting. If they refuse to play ball... find another.
3. Know what you want and need. Develop a list of the functions, look and services you need. Provide this list to several prospective developers and make them explain how these options are best accomplished. Those that cannot .... get dumped.
4. Know your software. If you choose a software driven site, such as Zen Cart, read and learn about the software. Buy a manual and really know what you are getting, then find a developer with a great deal of experience with your chosen software. This really matters, you see a general web designer cannot handle developing a Zen Cart project for example. They will only hack, crack and break the software functionality with their inexperience.... Costing you upgrade, development and repair money in the future.
5. Be ready to work.... This is your website right? There really isn't any money for nothing going on here... That is a bullshit lie propagated by people who would seek to take advantage of you long term. If it sounds to good to be true, it is.
6. Do not rely on a sole person or company for the maintenance of your website.... People go missing all the time. Make sure you have a backup person and you are able to provide them the needed access (hosting logins, FTP and admin information) to help you in a pinch.
7. Remember when you hire a professional, they are the professional. If this person tells you something is a really bad idea, you should likely listen.... are you a web developer?
8. Insist on a development time frame and frequent updates. Development schedules get busted up all the time, but you need a plan and to be kept abreast of the setbacks and new expected schedule forecasts.
9. Check your developer out. Contact owners of some of the websites in their portfolio... Better yet, send links to each of the prospective developers of each others sites and ask for their opinion =-). Google the developer or company name looking for the good, bad and ugly comments you may find. Really check them out, this is alot of money to simply throw away.
10. Ask alot of questions! Every single thing you want, need to know, or do not understand needs to be asked.... This is your website and you need to know.

It's also a good thing to user a designer/webmaster that has more than email access for support and questions, what if you are not at your computer and your site is down?

Being successful on the web takes a great deal of dedication and learning, all you do is in a constant state of change in this business. You never stop learning, adding new content and building links.... This is the cost of Internet success, make sure you are ready to pay it up.

• Posted by Melanie
• 31 December 2009
• Ecommerce SEO, So you want to be a Shop Owner Series

I really enjoy writing here to help and empower shop owners. Nothing about this business is more disappointing than the helplessness that many feel with their new Zen Cart software. From the beginning my main goal has been to provide information and services designed to allow these small business owners the skills, tools and support to be successful and not so dependent.

So to that end I would like to share with you the top 10 posts that users have found the most helpful to them. May you find them helpful and continue to prosper in 2010!

1. Free Shopping Feed Marketing for Online Stores - This post is about marketing your products using shopping feeds and contains a frequently updated list of portals and venues which are free to submit your feed to.
2. Color Psychology for Ecommerce Design - Here is one of my favorite marketing subjects! The use and psychology behind web design. What emotions and actions do colors invoke and how can we use this to our advantage.
3. Zen Cart SEO – 12 Steps to Success - This post was written specifically with all of the Zen Cart forum posts I answer in mind. It is rather a discipline than a tutorial, a list of the things you need to do to successfully run your online store.
4. Ecommerce Checkout Suicide - This page contains both secure and nonsecure items. Do you want to display the nonsecure items? How to identify and fix the most common and dreadful cause of checkout abandonment!
5. 5 Easy Things to Make Zen Cart Cook - 5 easy modifications that will make your Zen Cart faster and perform better!
6. Yahoo Search Supports Google Base Formatting - How to use your Google Shopping/Base feed to submit your products to Yahoo Search Monkey enhanced shopping results... for free!
7. Beating Your Links Down? - Working hard on link building? Here is a comprehensive tutorial detailing the counter productive things you should avoid to make your links count the best!
8. In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries - How to identify, repair and prevent duplication content in your shop. There are in fact many different ways to end up with duplicate content… Here are some common ones we see in ecommerce.
9. Where is My Site? Google Sandbox Filter - The phenomenon that people have claimed to observe is that Google temporarily reduces the page rank of new domains, placing them into what is referred to as its “sandbox”, in an effort to counter the ways that search engine optimizers attempt to manipulate Google’s page ranking to bring sites to the top, by creating lots of inbound links to a new web site from other web sites that they own before creating that web site.
10. Shared Hosting & Bad Neighbors - Hosting is a very challenging subject for most shop owners. Sadly many attain less that acceptable hosting to run their businesses. This post covers the notable pitfalls of shared hosting from less than professional web hosts and the implications for your business.

There is one more post, this one actually finished 11th, but is a VERY common question and great information as well.

• Keywords in your URLs? Matt Says Yes - SEO urls, which is a misnomer for spam now is a pretty complicated subject that many shop owners do not understand and can be taken advantage of with. I also suggest you read this post, on our marketing blog regarding the weight given to keywords in different parts of your urls. Also, this post reveals what you may be missing by rewriting your urls =-(

For those that are interested here are some stats for PRO-Webs in 2009:

• 36 New Zen Cart stores were built
• 89 Zen Cart site reports were completed
• 37 SEO My Zen Cart packages completed
• 106 Zen Carts hosted
• 154,319 unique visits including 18,598 to this blog
• I have answered 1,802 posts on the Zen Cart forum and averaging 2.3 per day!

We enjoy what we do for shop owners and look forward to serving you in 2010!

Here's wishing all of you a successful and prosperous new year!