Jul/090
In a recent update to the WebStore Manager (WSM), we have greatly enhanced the shipping and tax configuration to enable more flexible configuration scenarios and to make the user interface (UI) more friendly.
In this first part of a three-part series, I cover the shipping methods section. I also demonstrate how you can combine shipping rules and Microsoft RMS’s shipping services to create dynamic, tailor-made shipping options for your webstore.
As always, we rely on feedback from our customers and business partners to help us improve our software and documentation. If you have any requests or questions, please leave a comment below!
Jul/090
We’re pleased to announce the go live of the Alabama Fire College Bookstore! Alabama Fire College prepares Alabama’s firefighters and first responders to protect their communities from the loss of life and property.
afcbookstore.com
Congratulations to Bill Warren and Diana Hewlett! It was a pleasure working with you and your staff. Best wishes on your new webstore.
Jul/090
Any e-mail generated by your NitroSell webstore is sent from the store email address as listed in Dynamics RMS Store Operations Manager.
To update the e-mail address, in Store Ops Manager, select File, then Configuration. On the Store tab, select and enter your address, as per this per this screenshot:
Dynamics RMS Store E-mail Address
Finally, click OK to save the change and synchronize to effect it to the webstore!
If you require more flexibility, you may like to consider setting it to a mailing list address instead, to enable the webstore e-mails to be sent to multiple recipients. As always, please open a ticket on our Portal if you require further assistance.
Jul/090
We’re delighted to announce the go live of Giles Norman Photography! Giles has been creating portfolios of his work since 1981, the most recent of which showcases his time in New York. The gallery is located in Kinsale, Co. Cork – with an additional location in Dublin – and showcases his black & white photography.
gilesnorman.com
The site is presented in keeping with the Giles’s work, using a similar color palette and overall look & feel.
I’d like to point out the navigation system chosen by gilesnorman.com during the implementation — a series of drop down menus instead of the default, left-aligned navigation:
gilesnorman.com's innovative navigation menu
Congratulations to Giles and his dedicated team in Kinsale, it was a pleasure to work with Sharon and Catherine over the course of the project!
Jul/090
You may have already read about how Constant Contact can be integrated into your NitroSell-powered webstore. We have recently extended our support for Constant Contact by integrating it with our web form to e-mail feature (/store/go/mailer/ to those in the know!).
Note above the question: “Would you like to subscribe to our newsletter?” If this checkbox is ticked, then whatever form details you choose can be sent to your Constant Contact mailing list automatically, upon submission of the form. Here’s how it looks on the Constant Contact side:
We like to keep things simple, so integrating Constant Contact into your web form is as easy as:
- Enabling and configuring Constant Contact in your NitroSell Web Store Manager;
- Creating your web form — you can base it on the sample web form from our Knowledge Base;
- Adding the following form field tag to give the user the option to subscribe post form submission:
<input name="optional_mailing_list" type="checkbox" value="yes" /> - That’s it!
But wait, there’s more! We recognized that you may have multiple mailing lists. What happens if you have two forms, with details of one going to one list, and details of the other going to a different list? Not to worry because the solution is simple:
- Add the following form field tag to submit details to your “Offer Newsletter”:
<input name="mailing_list" type="hidden" value="Offer Newsletter" />
So there you have it. Mailing list integration with your web forms that’s as flexible as you need it to be!
Jul/090
Providing good quality information on availability makes it more likely that shoppers will buy from your webstore. Fortunately, NitroSell eCommerce provides great flexibility in deciding which information to display. This article gives an overview of how item availability works on the webstore.
Most of these options can be configured by retailers themselves, and knowledge base (KB) articles exist explaining how to do this. A few of the options may require the some input from our customer services team, which is available for a modest fee.
Before getting into how the system copes when an item is not in stock, let’s consider the general display options that are available:
- You can turn off the display of availability information if this is appropriate for your business;
- You can choose to display a simple message like “In Stock”, or to display the actual stock quantity, or display a range such as “1-5 In Stock” or “10+ In Stock”, etc. (may require premium support);
- When identifying the quantity available for the webstore, the software already deducts ‘allocated’ stock. You can also deduct a further quantity from the available stock if it is important that your webstore does not sell out all of the stock of an item in your physical store. The quantity deducted can be a fixed amount, a percentage, or an item-specific amount if desired (may require premium support);
- Items that you will not be restocking can be automatically removed from the webstore if their stock falls below a certain level;
- If you want to ensure that users cannot order more than you have in stock, you can change the Order Qty field to use a drop down menu. By default, the largest number in the drop down menu will be based on the quantity available.
If the webstore quantity falls to 0 or less, the software runs a series of checks to identify what to display. The tests are run in the following sequence.
Check Purchase-Order Records
- If your purchasing methodology is such that the “expected delivery date” on your purchase orders is accurate, your webstore can display a message such as “Expected back in stock on mm/dd/yy”. However, for most companies this option is not useful and should be disabled.
Check for a release date
- The PAM_ ReleaseDate field can be used to store a future release date for items. While many items (such as DVDs and books) have formal release dates, this field can also be used, for example, to indicate the date that you plan to release new stock for sale
- If the Release Date field contains a date, the webstore will display it alongside the item. Customers will be allowed to order items in advance of this release date.
- If this field is left blank, it will be ignored and the software will proceed to the next test.
Check Lead Time
- The PAM_LeadTime field is used to store lead-time information for each item. If the field is left blank, the webstore will skip this step.
- If the field’s content is in numeric format, NitroSell will display “Typically ships in X days”. X can either be a number in the format ‘X’, or a range in the format ‘X-Y’.
- If the content is text, that exact text will be displayed alongside the item.
- This field, therefore, enables the availability message to be unique to each and every item, if so desired.
- Very often, however, the lead-time number will be exactly the same for all (or most) items from a given supplier, or in a given brand, category or sub-category. NitroSell’s Product Attribute Manager (PAM) utility can be used to enter this information once and then quickly replicate it to all records in a particular group.
Final default
- If none of the three previous tests provides valid availability data, NitroSell eCommerce also stores a system-wide default message that will be applied. This is set to “Sorry, this item is currently unavailable”.
Jul/090
Pieces of Eight Gifts is now live! Pieces of Eight Gifts is located in Lafayette, Louisiana and has been open since 1971. They offer a bridal registry with an extensive selection of china, crystal and flatware, as well as many fine stationery and gift lines.
piecesofeightgifts.com
Congratulations to Luis and Nicole Perea! Thanks for all your hard work!
Jul/097
NitroSell eCommerce uses a number of well-recognized, safe techniques to ensure your webstore’s content is optimized for search engines. For purposes of this post, I’ll be using examples from Cork Art Supplies’ webstore. CAS was our very first customer and their web business has been growing steadily since they first went live in Decemeber 2003!
In part 1, I’ll explain each of the existing features and their implications. In part 2, I’ll be discussing some exciting, newly-added features, which were delivered in our SEO Updates Phase 1 milestone and are now available on the early adopters’ version of the webstore.
Search Engine Friendly URLs
Webstore URLs are “friendly” to both search engines and end users:
- Relevant keywords are included in every URL:
- Department and category URLs contain the department and category names:
- Product URLs contain the product names:
- Page content URLs contain the page names:
- Department and category URLs contain the department and category names:
- URLs are static instead of dynamic. Examples of dynamic URLs include those ending in .asp/.aspx and .php, and pages with parameters at the end of their URLs. Parameters are easily spotted because they begin with a question mark, for instance: www.mywebstore.com/product.asp?product_id=123. By using static URLs, pages on NitroSell webstores are easier for search engines to crawl.
- Only one version of a URL is provided to reach each page, which prevents users from linking to one version of a URL and others linking to a different version (causing the reputation of the content to be split between the URLs).
Optimized Page Titles and Heading Tags
The page title is the text displayed at the top of your browser window, and is also displayed as the link name in search results. The (h1) heading tag is the main heading displayed on a web page. We automatically generate both the title and heading tags to ensure they correlate and are representative of the content on the page.
Here are the title and heading tags for an example product from Cork Art Supplies:
<title>Sidewalk Chalk Bucket 20 Pack Details - Cork Art Supplies</title>
<h1>Sidewalk Chalk Bucket 20 Pack</h1>
Search result on Google showing page title:
ALT attributes for Product Images
Search engines have no way (yet) of fully understanding the content contained within images, so NitroSell eCommerce makes use of alt attributes in product image tags. This ensures search engines associate the images on your site with content relevant to what you’re selling.
Example product image tag with highlighted ALT attribute:
<img alt="Sidewalk Chalk Bucket 20 Pack" src="/product_images/238498.jpg" />
Furthermore, if you use our Product Attribute Manager (PAM) to assign images, the image names will be automatically set to either the item lookup code (barcode), or the product name, depending on your preference.
META Tag Generation
META tags are HTML tags used to describe the content of web pages. Your NitroSell webstore automatically generates and inserts META tags into department, category and product pages. Two types of META tags are generated – keywords and description tags – and they are populated with relevant data synchronized from your point-of-sale system.
For product pages, META keywords are taken from point-of-sale fields such as the department name, category name, product name, lookup code, brand, theme and sub-descriptions. It’s also possible to populate additional keywords using the Product Attribute Manager (PAM). The META description tag is composed of a combination of the product name and the extended description.
Example of generated META keywords and description tags:
<meta name="keywords" content="Sidewalk Chalk Bucket 20 Pack, Pastels And Crayons, Student Chalks, Pastels And Crayons, Student Chalks, A0030778, S02564, S02564, buy, shop, order, store" />
<meta name="description" content="Sidewalk Chalk Bucket 20 Pack: Colourful chalk perfectly shaped for little hands. Ideal for use on footpaths, schoolyards or playgrounds." />
The automatic generation of META tags ensures the web store has unique descriptions for each page and that each page’s content is accurately summarized for search engines. We never ‘stuff’ META tags with irrelevant keywords, and keeping them up-to-date is simply a matter of keeping your POS data current.
RSS Feeds of Product Panels
Product panels are used to display promotional items on the web store. Any products added to these panels are also automatically maintained in RSS feeds. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication and it is a format that enables the syndication of content on third-party web sites.
For example, a customer might add the New Products panel feed to his iGoogle homepage, enabling him to instantly see whenever products are added to your web store.
This is how the New Products feed from Cork Art Supplies appears on iGoogle:
RSS is a push technology, in that updates are made available directly to customers, instead of them having to check for updates themselves, thereby helping to drive repeat visits to your webstore, without any additional effort or investment from you.
Automated XML Sitemap
NitroSell eCommerce maintains an XML sitemap that lists all of the URLs on your web store. The sitemap is based on the Sitemaps protocol, which was jointly developed by Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Ask as a means to inform search engines of the URLs available for crawling.
The major search engines auto-discover sitemaps and expect them to reside at a preset location: www.yourwebsite.com/sitemap.xml
You can see an example of a NitroSell sitemap here: http://www.corkartsupplies.com/sitemap.xml
Providing a sitemap ensures that search engines are aware of all the content on your site. What’s more, it’s updated automatically every time your point-of-sale is synchronized with your webstore!
Google Webmaster Tools Integration
As soon as your store is set live, NitroSell adds your site to its Google Webmaster Tools account, verifies it automatically, and submits your XML sitemap. By submitting the sitemap for review, it encourages Google to begin crawling and indexing your new content as soon as possible.
Once Google has begun indexing your site, it typically takes 3-6 months for it to become established, and to begin to appear in relevant search results.
We also continually monitor the Webmaster Tools service so that we are aware of issues that could arise with your site and could negatively impact your performance on Google.
A Small Disclaimer
Please note: the URLs and tags used in this article are for illustrative purposes only. Actual URLs and tags may vary depending on your content and on modifications you have made to your templates in NitroScript.
Although we have hundreds of live webstores and this post is based on empirical evidence, we cannot make any guarantees as to how, when or whether search engines, such as Google, will index your webstore. Search engines are third-party entities, over which we have no control. We do everything we can to get your content listed and ranked, but it is ultimately up to them, and their algorithms, practices and guidelines, as to whether your content is listed or ranked for your desired keywords.
Jul/092
Following on from Donogh‘s post on implementation best practices, here I explain in more depth some of the advantages behind an early go live.
Reasons for delays to a webstore go live can range from small issues with regards to customizations to the look and feel, to inadequate product data. While we emphasize that customers should have an aesthetically appealing site and should optimize the content, small issues that do not effect the functionality, or the look and feel on the whole, should not stop a site from going live.
The following reasons outline why it is better to go live as promptly as possible:
Search Engine Indexing: search engines robots index web sites in phases — in the first phase, only top-level pages are indexed. In the second phase, department pages are indexed, followed by category pages in next phase, etc. These phases can be as much as 4 weeks apart, meaning it can take anywhere from 3-6 months to get your webstore fully indexed. The sooner you go live, the sooner the indexing starts.
Return On Investment: getting a return on your investment is what it all boils down to. If your site remains in staging you will still be paying your monthly fees, but you will not be able to receive web orders. If you set the store live, you can continue to improve your product data and also accelerate the return on your investment through web orders.
Frequently Updated Site: it’s better to go live now with 100 items with high quality data than with 500 items in 3 months’ time. You can continue to add items to the webstore after go live. This plays to your advantage because search engines favor frequently-updated content, which means their spiders will return more frequently and your webstore will rank higher, sooner.
Obviously, we are not suggesting you set your store live right away, but once the store is at a point where it is ready, i.e., it has a payment gateway, shipping and tax configuration, high quality item data, and the look and feel match the company branding, etc., then why not set it live and starting reaping the rewards!
Jul/090
Did you know we support the use of thumbnail images for alternate product views? Check out the following demo to learn more!