Got a mention of an interesting product for people looking for an ecommerce solution. Name Cheap have an entry level domain/SSL product that has potential. Worth checking out for those on a tight budget.
Thanks to Michelle.
Like quite a few of you, I was intrigued by the announcement of the new Google browser, Chrome. Apparently a few of you were as well – Chrome has made up 2.6% of visitors on my site in the last week! I checked a few client sites, they were getting between 0.1 and 0.5%. Not bad for a first week. Still, it shows what I’ve long suspected – the users of this site are a little more sophisticated than the average user.
Anyone think Chrome will knock Firefox off its #2 spot? How about knocking IE off?
My prediction: Chrome will reach 10 – 15% in 12 months, primarily by stealing Firefox market share. It will continue to creep up, but IE will remain #1 for the forseeable future. Still, who knows what 2 -5 years may bring.
Apologies to those who commented recently, a glitch meant I wasn’t notified of comments. All updated now. Will try and be more punctual 
Also, if you have any comments or suggestions for the site, please leave a comment or email me: markb AT useyourweb DOT com. I’m about to go into another round of updates/bug fixes.
Something I talk about a lot in my newsletter is customer focus. Everyone talks about it but not many people really do it. However, I was very interested to read an article about VistaPrint putting execs on the frontline. Senior staff would spend a few hours a week manning the customer phone line. What a way to get great feedback!
Great article talking about why they did it, and specific customer problems they identified and have addressed through this program.
“comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, today released U.S. e-commerce spending figures for the third quarter of 2007, showing that retail e-commerce increased 23 percent versus year ago to $28.4 billion.”
It’s a good time to be in ecommerce, if you are to believe the latest comscore stats (and I have no reason to doubt them).
“Online retail spending continues to grow at rates in excess of 20 percent year-over-year, which suggests that the market is still far from maturity”
“During the first nine months of 2007, total e-commerce spending surpassed $143 billion, putting it on pace to reach $200 billion by the end of the year. Retail e-commerce accounted for nearly $84 billion, or 58 percent of the total, while online travel spending came in just shy of $60 billion.”
Full release at http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=1842 .
SEO is the life blood of many e-commerce sites. It’d be rare to find one that hasn’t done at least a little SEO, even if it is creating some meta tags and optimising page titles. Most of us have gone and done at least a little link building.
The world of SEO is changing though. The real value is getting into the top 10 of Google. There’s plenty of studies that show most people never go past the top 10, and the most value is in the top 3 or 4, what shows above the fold (without scrolling). But, the game is changing.
I did a Google search today for Guatemala (the South American country).
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=guatemala&btnG=Google+Search.
Try the search now. I’ll wait.
In the top results, I get:
A preview of Google images results
A wikipedia article
A lonely planet article
CIA world fact book entry.
Let’s say I’m selling tours to Guatemala. The image results, there’s nothing I can do about as an SEO. The wikipedia, lonely planet and CIA world fact book entries – well, it’d be a brave SEO who would claim to be able to beat those three. It’s probably possible with a huge budget, but who has that sort of money for one word?
This is becoming increasingly common. I’m seeing in the top of the Google search results:
YouTube videos, with preview images
Google Book results
Google Images previews (like above)
“Refine results” (here’s an example)
The ubiquitous Wikipedia results.
I’m sure I’m missing some, and the list will only grow. www.Ask.com are really pioneering this trend, the classic example being their search results for Spiderman 3. Have a look. There’s a good chance that what you are after is on that homepage above the fold.
The result is there’s increasingly little room for “organic” results in the top 5. Remember, Google’s job (and Yahoo, MSN, Ask, etc) isn’t to keep you in business. It’s to keep them in business. They stay in business by providing the most relevant search results. If the most relevant search results means making organic results the also-rans, then that’s what they’ll do – and are doing.
What’s the solution? Well there’s no easy answer. Here’s some suggestions:
– Paid ads, of course. Unlike some sceptics, I don’t believe Google is doing this to drive us to paid ads. It is a nice side effect though!
– Long tail search results. Don’t SEO for Guatemala. SEO for “Guatemala boat tours”, “Guatemala cheap holiday”, and about 10,000 other results you can think of. This is where a content rich site is invaluable.
– Keep building links, but make them real links that drive traffic. Think of the SEO benefits of those link as secondary, not primary.
Take this site for example. I get a good chunk of my traffic from Google. However, a relatively small percentage is from the big terms. I got 2 people last month search for “free shopping carts review”. Add up all those 1′s and 2′s, and you have about 40% of my traffic. There’s a bunch of sites linking here, and they drive a lot of my traffic as well. I’m sure they help with my Google results, but there’s about half a dozen links which get me almost as much traffic as Google.
I hope this isn’t doom and gloom, just a good chance to re-think your SEO strategy.
“UK ecommerce breaks £4bn a month”
“July saw a massive jump in online retail, with sales rising 80 per cent on last year to a new all-time high, according to e-tail industry body IMRG.”
No matter how careful you are, your site will always get some traffic to broken links. A simple solution: do something creative with your 404 page to convert those people into customers. Here’s an example of one site that’s done it well: http://www.healthdirectusa.com/oops.html
The “Software and Information Industry Association” have published the catchy named “Top 10 Most Significant e-Commerce Developments of the Last 10 Years“.
- Google (Sept. 1998)
- Broadband Penetration of US Internet Users Reaches 50 percent (June 2004)
- eBay Auctions (Launched Sept. 1997)
- Amazon.com (IPO May 1997)
- Google Ad Words (2000)
- Open Standards (HTML 4.0 released – 1997)
- WiFi (802.11 launched – 1997)
- User-Generated Content (YouTube 2005)
- iTunes (2001)
- BlackBerry (1999)
The top 5 I have no argument with. They are all pivotal to e-commerce. Open standards are great in general, but I’m not sure how HTML 4.0 is such a boon to e-commerce, more so than any other website. There were HTML standards around before that.
Having said that, I’m not sure what I would put in such a list. When did 128bit SSL come out? Maybe that was more than 10 years ago? What do you think belongs in that list?
I saw a link to “Boffins tout formula for e-commerce” which of course got my interest. Some amazing new measure? A fresh look at integrated analytics? I was intrigued.
I started reading with
Alpar and Donthu used ‘data envelopment analysis’ to obtain a performance benchmark for a range of internet shops.
And was even more interested. Then I read on:
They claim that early measurements focusing only on the number of visitors to an e-shop, plus the click-through rates or the conversion rates, can help provide insights only into whether an advertising campaign has worked.
Such metrics do not, however, take into account the efforts associated with creating and running the sites, and offer little information about the economic success of the sites.
I re-read that about 3 times. “little information about the economic success of the sites”? There’s this thing called “profit”. There’s this really neat group of people called “accountants” who can help you work it out. Heck, there’s probably even an “accountant” in your city! Honestly, check it out!
Am I missing something here, or are they totally missing the point? I’m all for better measures, I don’t think we’ve seen the best measure yet, but I can’t see that these guys have cracked it.