Here is another great article by Kabir Bedi, our guest author.

Kabir Bedi works as the senior web consultant at LeXolution IT Services, a professional web development company based in India. It offers a full range of web design solutions and internet promotion services that cater to all the web based requirements of businesses.

3 SEO Mistakes That Can Spell Doom For Your E-Commerce Websites

As the world wide web becomes an increasingly intrinsic parts of our lives, more and more businesses are realizing the importance of making their products available online. And if you already have an e-commerce website, chances are you might be fighting a fiercely competitive battle with your rivals over the coveted search engines rankings.

While you might be doing all that you can, it is not uncommon to see businesses make terrible mistakes that can significantly damage their SEO efforts and result in lost sales. So, here are 3 of the most common SEO mistakes for e-commerce websites that you should definitely stay away from:

Cut-Copy-Paste

E-commerce website typically acquire product descriptions from the manufacturer and copy it word to word on their websites. While its a good thing to provide customers with detailed information, simply copying and pasting on your website can severely wreck your SEO efforts on account of duplicate content.

Write your Own Copy
You need to make sure that each and every page of your website is unique and consistent to the overall theme or products. So instead of uploading manufacture-supplied product descriptions, write unique descriptions for your products. In addition, make a list of your niche keywords and include them in the body copy, headers, sub headers, titles, meta descriptions and image tags.

Encourage Customer Reviews
A great way to promote unique content on your web pages is to encourage customer reviews. This will ensure a steady stream of unique content and also enhance the user-friendliness of your website.

A Complete Overhaul

Often site owners make site-wide changes overnight in a rush to conform to the latest SEO craze or adopt the hot new design trends of the season and so on. However, this often backfires and thrashes the overall search coverage of the website.

Identify your Requirements
Before you decide to rehaul your website, think about what exactly you want to achieve. After you have defined your objectives, introduce the new changes on a small group of pages and evaluate the outcome. Monitor the progress from here on and proceed as and how required.

Not Making it a Team Job

Often website owners lean heavily on one single aspect of the website and end up ignoring the other parameters. For example, a beautiful eye catching website may be visually appealing, but if its heavy on Flash or includes some rough bits of programming, then it would be at an overall disadvantage as far as the search rankings are concerned

Involve your Entire Team
Your website is the joint responsibility of your entire team – the designers as well as the developers. So make sure you discuss your ideas freely with the entire team before introducing any changes to the website. This will you can be sure that you get a balanced output.

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Here is another great article by Kabir Bedi, our guest author.

Kabir Bedi is the managing senior web consultant of LeXolution IT Services, a professional web development company based in India that specializes in delivering a full range of web design services and internet promotion services. His team of web developers craft powerful web solutions for their clients from across the world.

5 Hot Design Tips To Tweak Your E-Commerce Website!

Design is a critical component of anything on the web. Whether it is a personal blog, a corporate website or an online retail store, design is what determines how it will be perceived on the world wide web.

E-commerce websites are online stores whose success depends directly on the amount of revenue it generates. So, it design and layout should be such that it encourages sales and converts visitors into actual customers.

Here are 5 tips that’ll help you move your e-commerce website design in he right direction:

1. Do Some Spring Cleaning

If you get the same prices at both places, which one would you prefer – flea market or a shopping mall? I don’t blame you if you decide to go with the latter. After all, as customers, we desire a smooth and peaceful shopping experience.

Same is the case with e-commerce websites. If your website is loaded with unnecessary bells and whistles, it would only create a feeling of clutter. And this would hamper the shopping experience of your customers who would inevitably go elsewhere.

2. Speak with Colors

Different colors evoke different emotions and because of this, they take immense importance in website design, especially so e-commerce. Remember, since visitors are about to spend money or share their credit card details on your website, you need to make them feel more comfortable and paint a credible picture of yourself.

Use light non-threating colors that help to put visitors at ease and ensure them of a safe, risk free shopping experience. See how Amazon & HomeShop 18 has a clean layout with blue navigation and touches of orange to highlight certain areas. Even eBay makes great use of yellow highlight against a white background.

3. Cross Sell

Cross selling is an exemplary practice of advertising other products while customers are shopping. An ideal way to promote your products is by showing customers ‘Related Products’ or ‘Customers who purchased this also bought…’ link.

For example, if someone is shopping for mobile phones, you can show them memory cards or mobile phone accessories under the Related Products category. Since they have already bought the phone, chances are they will be interested in the accessories as well. Just make sure you don’t push them too much.

4. Speed Up the Purchase Process

In the fiercely competitive online marketplace, speed is what’ll give you the edge over your competitors. One of the reasons people enjoy online shopping is because of the ease and speed with which they can make purchases. Sluggish processes can make customers lose interest and abandon their shopping carts midway and go somewhere they can find faster service. Your loss and your competitors’ gain!

So, do all that you can to enhance the speed of your e-commerce so that you customers enjoy a smooth and seamless shopping experience.

5. Focus on your Niche

Bigger websites like Amazon and eBay can get away by selling anything and everything. However, this might not work for smaller websites and start-ups. If you have a smaller e-commerce website, try to focus on your niche. Not only can you showcase your expertise of the area but also many customers tend to go to a dedicated website than an one-stop-shop mall.

Don’t try to be the jack of all trades, you’ll only end up being master of none.

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Here is another great article by Kabir Bedi, our guest author.

Kabir Bedi is a senior web consultant at LeXolution IT Services, a professional web designing company that provides its clients with a full range of web solutions and internet promotion services. He has completed a number of web design projects for clients around the world.

7 Tips for E-Commerce Websites To Boost Their Sales This Summer!

As businesses come to realize the enormous marketing and sales potential of the World Wide Web, more and more of them are opening up online shops. However, in order to beat the competition and keep your online business alive and kicking, you need to ensure that you employ innovative ideas.

Here are 7 great tips that will help boost your sales:

1. Analyze Competitors’ SEO

Take some time out to study and analyze the SEO efforts of competitors that rank higher than you in the search results. Simply use the ‘View Source’ function of your browser and see what exactly makes them rank better for specific keywords. This will give you an idea about how to optimize your website on the same lines.

2. Make your Messages Crisp & Compelling

Web users, by virtue don’t read but simply scan through the information contained in the web pages. So, instead of lengthy product descriptions in categories and product details, keep it short and simple. Use crisp and compelling language that focuses on the most appealing features of your products and serves to attract customers.

3. Collect Quality Backlinks

Backlinks are the support system of a website. Not only do they help to boost your website ranking in search results, but also helps to build up your website credibility. However, instead of simply increasing your link count, focus on getting links from relevant and reputable websites. Also, don’t forget to ask for anchor text that includes your keywords instead of just your company name.

4. Include Local Information

People respond well to localized information grounds of familiarity! So, make sure you make your customers feel a connection on your website. And the best way to do it is to provide them with localized information about delivery and shipping times for their particular location. Believe it or not… It can be a deciding factor in making a sale. Also, consider updating inventory levels in real-time along with localized delivery dates based on stock and incoming purchases.

5. Include Your Phone Number in Title Tags

If you have a dial-in business, it would be a good idea to include your telephone number in the main title tag of your home page. This will make it easier for customers to see your phone number without even having to visit your home page because the phone number will also appear in Google search results.

6. Increase your Page Speed

With page speed becoming one of the many factors in Google ranking algorithms, it has become increasingly important to make sure your web pages load fast. Not only will you earn brownie points from Google but also make it easier for users to access your website.

7. Publish an Interesting Newsletter

In order to make sure that your newsletter stands out from the bulk your customers might already be receiving, you need to load it with outstanding and insightful information. You can use your newsletter to show your customers what your company is doing to help them, give them special discount coupons etc. It should be compelling enough to make them open it, read it, and look forward to it.

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The Woolworths brand has been relaunched as an online retailer after being bought by Daily Telegraph owners, Sir David and Sir Frederick Barclay.

The much-loved High Street chain went into administration (bankruptcy) in November and its more than 800 stores closed last January after struggling with debts of £385m.

The brands were bought by Shop Direct Group, owned by the Barclay twins, for an undisclosed sum.

They will sit alongside their other online retailers, including Great Universal and Marshall Ward.

The new outlet, accessible at Woolworths.co.uk, offers goods including toys, kidswear and Woolies’ famous Pic n’ Mix confectionary.

The new website was launched on June 25th, and an estimated 20,000 users are believed to have registered with the site shortly after it launched.

A blog has also been launched at WooliesHQ.co.uk. The blog introduces the Woolworths team to customers, and users are encouraged to register to become a member of the VIF club – that’s “Very Important Families”, a free membership scheme through which Woolies will offer exclusive perks.

The company’s chief executive Mark Newton-Jones said he was confident about Woolworths’ future.

“This is great news and we are confident that Woolworths, as an online brand, will once again prosper and quite rightly stay at the heart of British retailing.”

This is a classic tale of how a bricks and mortar business is using the power of the Internet to gain an advantage. In this case, the bricks and mortar business went bust (collapsed), and a pure online business has been born out of the ashes.

Over the past year, a lot of British retailers experienced serious financial turmoil bought on by the economic recession. Quite a few of them went under. The success of Woolworths.co.uk will be proof that the future of any business could depend on their ebusiness strategies.

Woolworths first opened its doors in the UK 100 years ago this year. The move would revive the brand for future generations. The old way of doing things gives way to the new.

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While some people are focused on selling just domain names, there are people that carefully select one domain name and develop it into a super brand.

This is where the money is, period. If you build the brand, you will make money while the brand is still popular, and if you sell it, well, you could even make much more.

This is what Simon Calver did. He has put his online DVD rental business LoveFilm.com up for sale for an estimated £200m ($327M).

Calver made his mark at Dell Computers before becoming the boss of DVD online rental firm Video Island, which merged with LoveFilm in 2006.

Calver has built LoveFilm.com into Europe’s largest online DVD rental company, with over 1.2 million subscribers. With a seven per cent stake in the business, he stands to make £14m ($23) from the sale if it goes for the estimated £200m.

The remainder of the business is owned by Amazon, Balderton, Index, DFJ Esprit, European Venture Partners and a number of business moguls.

The business has grown rapidly since its inception six years ago and has recently received a number of bid approaches. It has hired Jefferies, an investment bank, to advise on the bids and work on a possible sale.

Lovefilm, with 1.2m members, has become the market leader in mail-order film rental. It has bought out most of its rivals, including a deal last year to acquire the European rentals operations of Amazon, the internet retailer, for £63m ($103m).

Lovefilm’s latest accounts, due to be published shortly, are expected to show that the group generated turnover in 2008 of £73m ($119m). It is understood to be on course for more than £100m ($163m) this year.

Do you have £200m to spare? This is definitely one ebusiness I would seriously consider buying!

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