I’m not in favor of marketing your whole site as one page. When you have different offline marketing tactics for different set of product, why should your site lag behind? Each page should market itself differently considering the target audience.

I never think the same layout will be suitable for both a working professional & a college newbie. A great example is Apple website. Each of their product page look very different. But if all your services/products targeted to same user group then the layout may be same.

Here I mean to say that each product has some specific target audience. So when a visitor comes from Google he/she should not land on your homepage. Think a bit, how good it will be if they land on that product page for which they searched.

a) SEO:
If I’ll search Google for a keyword, I’m in a hurry to find what I need. So if I’ll get a link to your homepage there is more possibility that I’ll not see what I’m trying to. Because you can’t put everything on your homepage, so either I’ll search inside or go back. In 80% of the case people stop surfing the website. So you clearly understand the importance of making your product pages more searchable.

SEO Advantages

1. Your product page has a rich content on that keyword. So you can expect a good rank on Google.
2. Your page can hold the search keyword as its page title, which your homepage cant do.

Linkback:

SEO rank increase on increase in inbound links. So for making your product page a SEO success, link it back from your blog posts or other website. Your hypertext should contain the keywords you want it to rank for.

b) Content:

Your each product page content should have articles targeted to the audience group. They should be able to understand it clearly.

c) Graphs:

Recently I saw a lot of people coming to our site from Google image search. They all spent a quality time on the site & the conversion rate of them was pretty amazing. So if you have some images/graphs that clearly shows the whole process, then you can get a lot of marketing benefit. Put them on your product page. Put ALT text for each image, as Google can only see ALT texts, not images. The ALT text should contain what is it all about, with specific keywords, the least the better. Now Google image search will index it within some days.

Find more on next part of this topic…

#image courtesy: Theprodigi

Recently we changed a little bit in our website. So here we are telling you what is the motivation behind the change and how we are preparing ourselves to serve you better. Please watch this video:

This post  is the trailer to the article originally posted by Darpan Munjal on his blog commercewiki.com. Here I’m highlighting the point he wants to demonstrate:

1. Do not force me to register during the checkout process. Most of the people quit in this step, if he/she is a first time customer, including myself. So offer guest checkout.
2. Remember that Google is not your target customer. Write contents keeping in mind that you are telling your client something which will propel them to buy. Google can make more people to come to your site, but they will not buy from you.
3. Don’t let me add something to the cart if later you will tell me that it is out of stock. Always mention the availability of the product on the product page (like: “In stock”, “Out of Stock”)
4. Do you have categories which do not have any products online? It’s really frustrating.
5. Just because you have a lot of promotions and products on your site, you don’t have to show all of them on your homepage!!
6. It would be nice to know when I will receive an item.
7. Don’t show me recommended products before checkout. I really quit the process and roam with all those products and comes to a situation of never buying anything, because I loss my zeal by this time.
8. Please make good use of my email id, if you take it during checkout! For example, if would be nice of you to follow up few days later to check if the item arrived properly, and if I would be interested in writing a review for the item. I don’t mind writing an honest review – you just have to ask and remind me! Which is a good segue to the next point.
9. Don’t moderate negative reviews. It shows non-transparency. I’m OK with 2% of negative remarks if rest is positive. If you are getting more negative remarks, then you should stop selling it, because seriously there is some problem. Solve it. Notify users and they will be happy.
10. Don’t wait until the final step in the checkout to show me the final price including the coupon discounts, taxes and shipping costs.
11. Please don’t try to hide your contact information just because you want to minimize the number of customer service calls.
12. When I am providing my credit card information, you really don’t have to ask me what type of credit card it is because you can figure it out from my credit card number. Just show me the credit card type for confirmation and I will let you know if there is a problem.
13. Can you also do something about that Captcha! It’s really annoying. If you can’t remove it, make it simple (like 2+3=?).
14. Don’t put AdSense ads on your store page. Adsense can give you few bucks. But don’t you think that you are advertising for a different company instead of you for the same product line as you offer? And I’m sure I can’t trust you.

So please take care of these features while developing your ecommere website. Read the original article of Darpan Munjal here.

#image courtesy: http://www.smosh.com/

Watch this video if you are into developing your software or designing a new interface. We are inculcating these technologies to our upcoming websites and SAAS products. I learned a lot about how to design inside -out, designing from the epicenter. Check this out and let me know what learning you got from Ryan.

Ryan Singer, “Designing with Forces: How to Apply Christopher Alexander in Everyday Work ” from MFA Interaction Design on Vimeo.

1. You need to tell yourself you want to work for your ideas.
2. Get some idea that’s great and shows you a projection of good revenue.
3. You are in a way to find your team and you found some to start with. They are your partners with different set of working behavior. But they are really great.
4. You think your ideas are great. That’s true. All most all agrees. But nobody wants to pay you for that.
5. You found you are not able to tell your client that your solution for them actually worth some money & hours of great labor. But your clients don’t think so. There are always one to tell them that you are really really bad.
6. After working for some more time on that concept, you really think it is not going to workout, you really need something more attractive.
7. Your partners are in doubt as you. You put and mixup all your ideas.
8. You really got bunch of ideas and work on each of them.
9. You meet a lot of other corporate biggies who really appreciate you and your work and express they want to help you, if you need any.
10. You really get some of the good VC funding option. But you feel it is not you cup of tea and you really do not need it.
11. But in spite all these good things, you realize that your actual business is going down. You are really frustrated.
12. Your and your partners’ family put a lot of pressure to actually get out of this and do some other job. you use immense energy to make them agree to your passion.
13. Some of you think you should do some part time job to at least have some steady income.
14. You suddenly get a lot of inquiries for your business.
15. But time and again it didn’t happen or was getting late, because your prospect has shut down his business or fell ill or got through an accident. You started blaming your luck.
16. But you always read a lot of inspirational stories of great leaders and entrepreneurs. You feel energetic. I can do. It’ll surely happen. All I need is push it a little bit harder.
17. Then suddenly you realize, you should provide just as much as your client asked you. Not more than that, just because you think it is going to help your client. You should suggest only a bit extra. If they agree, charge a minimal, don’t give it for free. Charges may be reduced, but do not give it free, because your time worth it.
18. Gradually you feel that you are a known face to all. People are talking about you. They are interested to take your services. They pay you money.
19. You really pushed your marketing effort harder. Your every process does marketing for yourselves. And you are amazed to see great talents are interested to work with you, at least on part-time basis.
20. Then you realized that you are now successful business because you stick to a single idea for almost two or more years. You learned a lot about how to run this business. People are really admiring you because they think you are successful and doing a business for almost 2 years.
21. Then suddenly you think about all those moments, you thought you should quit.

These are those few key experiences I’d been through my journey as an entrepreneur. A lot of these can match with your journey. All I’ve to say is any idea can be successful, despite of huge competition. Only you need to stick to your idea for that little more time and put efforts after efforts.

# I’ll love to hear your stories also. Please comment below.

** Image courtesy: Tech IT Easy