cranvas

Social bookmarking - A whole new way of discovering the web

June 26th, 2009

88374715 The web is connected through links. Ongoing and managing links gave way to the concept of bookmarks. Links which are registered and tagged by different users form a library of information for the user to be able to retrieve. If this library gets shared with other users on the web then each user with their own library of  information provide a wealth of information for you to share and retrieve at will. Coupled with this is the possibility of  rating information so that the better rated bookmarked webpages become more popular than the poorly rated ones.

These links are tagged using keywords or labels (can be referred to as a form of meta data) assigned by the user. Users tag content for ease of retrieval.  The ability to draw out tags from a like minded social network as against a web based search engine provides more value to the information or research at hand.When a number of users bookmark their favourite pages and apply a tag to each page they bookmark, the most popular pages rise to the top.

Social bookmarking sites allow you to tag and share information. The more they are used the more is the value added to them and all those who are a part. Each site is its own variant in what it offers to the user community.These range from giving information on the number of users that have bookmarked the webpage, option to rate and rank a page,draw inferences from the tags, provide web feeds etc. These also vay in the quality and type of audience they serve.

flickr users generally manage their own digital photos for sharing;  Technorati uses tags supplied by users.These tags describe their blogs so that they can be discovered by others; del.icio.us aggregates tags, links, photos from within the social community and is designed to allow you to store and share bookmarks on the web, instead of inside your browser; Digg aggregates news and so on……

How do these social bookmarking sites really help your website?
If you have good unique content that can be accessed by anyone your site will meet with approval from users and gain popularity. Social bookmarking can reach where search engines may not reach as quickly. If your webpage has something of  value to offer, you do not have to wait to get your webpage ranked so that it can get viewed by other people - within the right network your content gets circulated fast - enough to drive traffic to the site directly.

Ecommerce solutions

June 26th, 2009

ist1_8619686-shooping-icon

Finding the right online shopping cart solution

A shopping cart serves as the frontend that transfers information through a secure connection to a payment gateway. The payment gateway interacts with your merchant bank account to process the information. It then sends back a confirmation or denial back to the shopping cart software. Building your own customized shopping cart may not give you as many features as available in third party shopping carts. There are a number of online shopping carts available. Before purchasing a cart keep a small checklist handy so that you can pick the right one.

Script compatibility with the hosting
Shopping cart scripts are written in many different coding formats - PERL, PHP, ASP etc. check compatibility with your host before purchasing.

Installation and code modification
How easy is a cart to install on your server? Can the code be modified to give the same look and feel as your website? These are some areas you would need to check before making a purchase.

Back-up files support
Check on the support for backing up files and allowing for export into a variety of formats.

Payment gateway services supported
Most carts support multiple gateway services. Before purchasing your cart, review the gateway services supported as well as the compatibility of the payment gateway with your merchant account.

Order Completion Details
Ensure that the shopping cart has an option to send an email confirmation when a customer completes an order as well as a reminder to print the order details.

Provide a choice of Shipping Carriers
For confirmed orders the customer should be able to link directly to the carrier site so as to track the progress of shipment. The shipping should be able to offer a choice of carriers. In addition the cart should be able to calculate shipping and tax in real time from USPS, USP, FEDEX etc. as well as provide an option to include or keep shipping costs separate.

Multiple Product upload
The cart should give you the option of bulk uploading of products. The product pages should be SEO friendly. While uploading product images do you have to put in one large image and one small image of every product or can you just put in one image and auto generate thumbnails?  If you auto generate thumbnails you save time, web space and bandwidth. In addition you should also be able to create and manage your product attributes.

Content management tool
Check if the store has the option to add new content pages. This is important as you need to serve content pages for the crawlers to pick up and display your web pages.

Newsletter functions
This should not be a critical feature but having a newsletter option would help in an online website promotion.

Gift certificates, promotions and discounts
Having auto responders to gauge customer satisfaction as well as to inform about special offers and promotions would help with the online marketing.

Search Engine Friendly features
Some shopping carts provide a number of search engine friendly parameters that can be customized for all the uploaded products. Check if the cart supports addition of title tags, meta tags, alt tags, breadcrumbs for optimization. This would be an important aspect as you want your products to be reachable to a wider audience.

Most product pages are displayed with query strings and hamper indexing of the site product pages. Since the main purpose of selling products is for the product pages to be “found” it is important that the cart provides an option to change query strings to static urls. This will ensure that the site is accessible to search engines and may contribute to improved search engine rankings.  Also check if the cart provides the option of a sitemap or an XML sitemap generation.

Affiliate modules and Banner Advertising controls
Some carts support affiliate modules. If your website has a requirement then check to see that affiliate module should be able to handle the signing up process, track statistics, provide payment details made to affiliates.

Keep the checklist in mind, however base your choice on the type of products you sell and the catalog of products.

Improve site performance

June 26th, 2009

istock_000005241395xsmall

Some tips to make the website work

The purpose of every site is to gain more visitors and ultimately get good conversions that give a good Return on Investment. To help achieve these we have outlined some areas that can be worked on your website.

1. Implement Title Tags and Meta Tags
Title tags are an important aspect of search engine optimization. The wording should flow smoothly while containing important keywords. This is where the search engines and your target audience get a feel for what your Web site is about.

You want to stress all the viral information in this limited area of space. This is your area for free advertising, so take full advantage of this. Insert information like company name and your targeted keywords that you have chosen for this page. Every page on your site should have unique title tags and meta tags.

2. Offer Quality Content
Your content is very useful for the search engines in determining whether or not your Web site is relevant to your topic. You want quality, keyword rich content. You do not want to stuff your keywords, but place them sporadically throughout you site.

Keyword stuffing is a black hat technique that will get you permanently banned from the search engines. Make sure that your content flows smoothly and rolls off the tongue easily. Do keep in mind that ultimately humans and not search engines have the ultimate decision to purchase your product or service. Write your content first for your audience and then add keywords where it makes sense to.

3. Acquire Quality Links
Links are a valuable tool for gaining top search engine rankings. Links (back links) are viewed as a vote from one site to another, so the more links to your site, the more popular the search engines think your site is. Higher-quality links from authority Web sites are weighed more heavily when ranking your site. So, acquire links from reputable Web sites that are popular.

You want to get links that are related to your line of work to increase rankings. Make sure all your links are related in one way or another to your Web site. If not, then your site will be penalized in the rankings, which is the opposite of what we are trying to achieve.

4. Strive for Quality Backlinks
Avoid link farms or buying links from non-authority sites, as they will only do more harm than good.

It is not the quantity of links you have, but the quality of those links you do have. Make sure your links appear natural, not like they have been paid for. You must have something of quality to offer others so they will link to your site and increase your search engine rankings.

5. Use HTML
Search engine spiders have a hard time reading coding other than HTML (hypertext markup language). Have content written in HTML not Flash.

6. Make Site Navigation Easy
You want a Web site that is easy to navigate. The more confusing and broken links on your site, the less likely it is that a spider will fully crawl and index all your pages.

Submit a sitemap to Google so it can find and index all the pages on your Web site. Sitemaps are a necessity for getting all your Web pages indexed and included in search engines.

7. Use Fresh, New Content
Search engines do not want old, outdated content on their search results, so you must make sure to add new content to your site on a consistent basis. Both humans and spiders like to see new content on your Web site. Make sure to update your content to make sure it is up to date and relevant.

You can make simple grammatical changes to your site or add pages — anything counts as new content. If you stop adding new content to your Web site, your rankings will start to slip and fall way below your desired results. If you see your rankings start to slip, make sure you add new content to your site.

8. Add a Blog to Your Site
A blog is a great tool for keeping visitors up to date to with your site. Blogs help promote your site and give your visitors another way to locate your Web site. Blogs and blog posts get indexed in the search engines quite quickly as well.

If you start a blog about the industry you are in, you can quickly build up your rankings. Blogs are especially useful for adding fresh content to your site. Blog posts are seen as new content, so post in your blog at least once a week to keep your content new. Blog postings do not have to be relevant to your Web site, but it does help to keep the content somewhat relevant to build up and authority blog.

9. Make Your Web Site for Humans - Not Spiders
This is probably one of the biggest mistakes committed by newcomers to Internet marketing. You want to have a Web site that is easy to read and comprehend — not a site that is made for the spiders to read. Ultimately, your site is viewed by humans who hold the purchasing power. Ensure that your Web site design is easy to read and does not have any misspellings.