E-Commerce for All

Everyone has an passionate opinion on this one, and honestly most theories are in general correct as there are many very effective schools of thought regarding domain registrations. The most important thing, in my opinion, is to register a domain that will do what you need it to do. Makes sense?

You most easily accomplish this by starting with an honest marketing and business model first. You must answer some tough questions like:

1. What types of services or products will you be selling with your online store? (Now and in the future as you grow)
2. What is your targeted area/region or customer base age, gender…? (Demographics)
3. What other companies will you form relationships with? (Distribution, etc.)
4. What kind of budget does your store development project have? (A real budget… Never over extend)
5. What is your plan for marketing and information distribution? (PPC, local marketing etc..)
6. Is your brand or company name well known or rich enough to include in your domain effectively? (Probably not)
7. What is the potential traffic for your store’s products/services? (What are others in the same niche doing?)
8. How much or deep is the competition? (Who’s on top and what do you have to do to beat them?)
9. Are you serious about making a successful commerce store… or have you big dreams and little execution?

There are a really host of things to consider in your domain name selection… some you can control and some you really cannot. Obviously, domain availability is one that is generally out of your control. If the name you “must have” is already registered, you might attempt to purchase it for a substantially higher investment. I strongly suggest you have a qualified SEO check it out first as there a many tricks and issues which can spoil the deal… and get a domain broker to handle the purchase for you… Would you sell your house using a car salesman?. Then, realize for certain, this is going to cost a great deal more than 10 bucks… So set your budget and stick to it.  Secondly, there are certain rules and restrictions regarding domain name registration.

• Domain names over 26 characters are supported in most web browsers, but many email, programs, and form fields will not be able to handle them. For reasons beyond my comprehension, however, in most extensions you can register up to 63 characters long.

• Domain names cannot begin or end with a hyphen.

• Names can only include English letters, numbers, and hyphens. For most TLD extensions the name must be 3 letters or longer.

Generally speaking, if you plan to target your home country (or another) you will benefit from registering a country level/coded domain and hosting physically residing in that country as well. If you are seeking a global market, then I suggest .com for a business or .net if you have to. If you are an organization or group, then .org would be perfect. In the United States, there is the .us, which I am personally against registering your business with this as it’s main url..

Very likely one of the most important decisions you will make in your store’s development is the selection of a domain name.  Your domain name will be your calling card, brand and synonym for your business name.  Defiantly not something to be taken lightly.

While I would advise against pumping your brand /company name in things like page titles, there is a very long reaching value to marketing your brand in your domain name.  While your brand name very likely does not carry any search volume or notoriety yet, you cannot exclude your brand from your development.  If you for example go with a keyword rich domain name and fail to register your brand of company domain names and derivatives you may find yourself with a traffic sucker in the future.  Certainly for the traffic sucker or domain flipper there are valid reasons for registering domain names like your business name.  How would it suit you to have a spammy Ads page at a domain name which seemingly represents your company?  This WILL happen if you do not register them.

Since this is such a big decision we have some pointers below to help you make a solid domain name choice for your store.

1. If the .com and .net versions cannot both be registered to you then move to another name.
2. If you are going with a keyword rich domain name… Dashes are NOT required most of the time.  Google and other search engines will pull or stem these keywords from other connecting letters as long as there is enough volume in the keyword’s search volume.  If you want to know for example, whether Google stems your keywords simply search for that keyword by itself and look to see that Google has bolded it in urls or domain names.  If you find it anywhere in the url in the search query, then Google knows this word.
3. Plan on registering a few domain names.  Misspellings, product based, brand/company names, and your second choice/runner up domain name as well.  This is like an insurance policy for your company.
4. Domain names as a rule are now required to be 3 or more characters.
5. Skip the dashes and underlines.
6. Shorter is better and snappy is awesome!
7. The terminology should be natural.  If you are looking to register “store4u”, then you would also seek to register and redirect “storeforyou”, “store4you”, and “storeforu” in both the .net and .com versions.  Again, do not become easy pickens’ for traffic suckers.
8. Avoid “my”, “your”, etc and other pronoun based domain names suggested by tools.  These will only send traffic to the name that does not use the pronoun as users will frequently forget these.
9. Register your main name (at least this one) for more than one year, as the search engines tend to favor the investment with a small bit of trust score.
10. If you are in the US your REALLY need to have the .com, it is the most common and recognized tld extension.
11. Avoid very hard to spell or commonly misspelled words, unless you register those misspelling also.

Domains that are easy to remember will fare better in all of your marketing campaigns.  If a shopper is using email or a social media type venue to convey your “Great” store to another…

Very often as we complete store reports and consult we find online stores that have made modifications and other development tasks which clearly inhibit the ability to gain the shoppers trust. You can pay thousands of dollars to develop an online store and get the very best SEO, but if your store does not enlist the shopper’s trust you are dead in the water.

Overall Internet users have become more sensitive and aware of the factors which are considered “trust” violations. Surfers are quite skilled in identifying a “bad site” and are reacting accordingly. No longer do droves of Internet users mindlessly click ads or provide personal information, those days are gone. We are in the dawn of a far more savvy Internet user.

Some mistakes we see are in fact very common and very out of date, others are just plain lack of foresight. Today we will cover some of the most common trust reducing metrics we have found in the stores we have analyzed. You may well know that we develop and optimize Zen Cart, so some factors will be directly related to the Zen Cart software, but most of these store trust issues are very common in other e-commerce platforms.

• If you are using a shared SSL or none at all, you are sending a message of distrust to your shoppers. Even full PayPal or other off site processing accounts should make use of a private SSL. Customers don’t even want to provide their email address without one. Honestly for the cost involved there is no valid reason not to use a proper secured protocol for your users.
• If you are using a private SSL, the battle does not stop there. Many times we visit a site and the secured pages include outside non-secure links or elements. Shoppers have no idea that these links or elements are generally just part of your template, and they don’t care either. They only know the lock is showing broken and they feel unprotected.
• Let shoppers know you have installed an SSL to protect their transaction and what to look for to assure it is working. This is really not necessary as most know already, but it sends the message that you personally have taken steps to protect them.
• Collect as little information as possible on checkout. Shoppers do not want to answer unrelated personal information questions. Questions of this nature only lead them to believe you are somehow hording and using their information for other means.
• Enhance your checkout with helpful tips and notes to let shoppers know where they are in the checkout process and that they are on track. This includes a clear shipping policy for rates and delivery. They should know their shipping choices in the very beginning of checkout, as sites like eBay and such have burned shoppers with inflated shipping charges and they are very wary if they do not know the shipping cost before the begin to checkout
• Send ALL customers a receipt from YOUR store’s domain email address and provide tracking or an update of shipment to EVERY customer without fail.

I realize shop owners most likely have little time for reading my extremely long posts. Which is good because otherwise I would hate to be out of work =-). So for those of you with little time on your hands, here is a brief yet powerful post of our top 10 e-commerce tips for online store owners.

1. Make good use of your store’s page real estate. You get about 15 seconds max to engage a shopper and this happens in the eyeline and header area. Pay very special attention to the top left and make both good visual and textual use of these areas. (Believe it or not surfers generally scan the text first)



2. Your search function is a high priority and warrants top quality real estate. The absolute best place is near the top left of the header. Most people will search first, as they are have generally been conditioned to expect poor navigation and the inability to find what they are seeking using a site’s menus.
3. Sales text and special savings are very much at home and appropriate in the eyeline text area. Remember, engage them… Not chase shoppers off.
4. Your menu is a crucial piece both for users and organic search indexing. The main menu should be highly relevant and topside. Right hand column menus may look cool, but in my experience shoppers are put off by them. Ancillary pages like shipping information and terms of service do not belong here. Down to the low income real estate with those links, if a shopper needs them they will look for them and find them… Most shoppers have little or no need for them.
5. Relevancy and content concentration may be great for Google, but not always so accommodating for your shoppers. Your products need to be within three clicks of your main page, and less is better.
6. I realize we all want great organic search rankings, but if you cannot convert the traffic… What’s the point? Use logical ordering, user friendly text and naturally named categories and sub-categories. Shoppers will convert better.
7. DO NOT IGNORE YOUR CATEGORY PAGES. This is a very, very common mistake among the sites we have analyzed. You see, product pages have a very nice and tight topic with which to rank with, and category pages are next in ability to rank. Their content is far less broad than your shop’s main page and they can additionally chase more keywords and longtails with their slightly broader content.
8. Is your company name WalMart? No? Then stick to a product array which is densely relevant. Hey, if you find another great product line and it’s not related, then build a new store. Keep your store’s product scope and theme tight.
9. I can certainly understand the weakness we all feel, but, please limit your cross-sells and hard sells. Shoppers really are confused by too many options, and rightly so. Shoppers are also put off by overly persistent hard selling techniques. (kind of like that damn car salesman chasing you around the lot!)
10. Your checkout has to be short and sweet. Do not collect unnecessary information from shoppers or hold them up in checkout any longer than necessary.