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/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/091
If you’re new to the world of eCommerce, it can be a daunting place: new concepts to grasp, new processes to understand, and important decisions to make that will ultimately determine your success. That’s why we’ve spent years perfecting our implementation service, to guide you through every step and, crucially, to ensure you maximize your return on investment (ROI).
An area that often confounds retailers is go live readiness. We’ve found customers who rush to go live, with poor quality product data, or insufficient information about the store, and, on the other extreme, those who spend months tirelessly perfecting every detail. Of course, there is a balance to be struck, and timing is everything!
With that in mind, here’s our take, directly from NitroSell’s implementation best practices:
- Go live early: aim to go live 1-3 months after your staging store activation date. Going live in 1-3 weeks is possible, but isn’t realistic unless you are exceptionally well prepared and have plenty of spare time. Going live any later than 3 months after activation will have a negative effect on your ROI;
- Be decisive: using competitive analysis and other (basic) marketing techniques, quickly identify and decide on what matters for your webstore — navigation structure, payment gateway(s), domain selection, tax and shipping, e-mail configuration, and the look & feel. Making these choices sooner enables you to focus on the main body of work;
- Iterate: start with a small percentage of your items and populate the web attributes comprehensively. For instance, if your store has 1,000 products, start with 50, or 100, and perfect the product information, including images, brand, theme, product name (using WebDescription), extended description, pricing and quantity info;
- Test: once you’ve gone live with your initial set of items, consider spending a little on a pay per click (PPC) ad campaign with AdWords or Microsoft adCenter. Using Google Analytics eCommerce tracking (which works automatically with your webstore), you can quickly and easily identify what’s selling. Armed with that knowledge, add similar products to those that are selling well in your next iteration;
- Build: the single biggest killer of web sales is neglect. As your webstore’s revenue grows, continue to build on your initial efforts. Schedule some time every week to work on your store and grow your new web business.
That’s it!
As always, questions and comments are welcome! Please feel free to leave a comment below, or to open a ticket on our Partner Portal.