What is Your SERP?

When you're setting up your ecommerce business and you chat with other online business owners, many of these people will ask you what your SERP is. That is an acronym (the Internet is just a huge collection of them isn't it?) Search Engine Results Page and in a nutshell, it means where does your site stand when someone queries a search engine using one of the keywords related to your site.

Search engines constantly "crawl" the web reading and indexing text off websites. The robots that do the reading and indexing of these sites are called "spiders". Every piece of text is indexed and queried, although the major school of thought now is Google only reads the first 101K of a webpage and doesn't index beyond that, instead moving on to another page. When someone searches for a site based on a keyword, the returned results from the search engine will be in the order considered the most relevant. The more relevant the site, the higher the SERP.

In addition to search engines crawling your site and indexing it; your website will also be indexed by the various internet directories. An example of a search engine versus a directory is Google is a search engine and Yahoo is a directory which has human editors reviewing the information that the spiders turn in for indexing which ensures a higher quality of returned search content. Though, search engines generally have more information indexed because they are purely automated.

If you want to make sure your site gets the optimum in SERP, you will want to have your ecommerce website as optimized as possible for the spiders when they come crawling. Talk to the professionals at Merchandizer and they can look at your site and give you a quote for making your site as strong an ox in SEO and helping to give you the maximum SERP that your site can attain.

SEO or SEM?

You'll hear both these acronyms bandied around extensively when you're getting into the ecommerce. They are both very important factors in your online business, and not understanding them both can cost you in the form of clients and sales.

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, and it is a very deliberate science of understanding the algorithms and nuances of the various search engines and directories. If your site isn't strong in SEO, meaning it's not a search engine friend, your website will be fairly invisible to anyone looking for your type of product or service on the web. Talk to a professional company with experience in SEO, such as the pros at Merchandizer before you embark on this task yourself.

There's a lot of erroneous information out on the web regarding SEO techniques and many of them involve repeating keyword phrases (spamming) on your webpage in the hopes it will make it more relevant to the search engines, this is almost guaranteed to get your site de-listed or worst case scenario: blacklisted from the search engines.

SEM is not as often mentioned but equally important. SEM stands for Search Engine Marketing and it is a module of SEO, if you sell something off your website, you'll want to be involved in SEM. Both of these are key in getting your site found. Let's face it, more people go to Google than the local phone book to look up a business or service and if your business isn't show up near the top of the search results then you are not being found by potential customers and that is where a good program of SEO / SEM can jump start your sales on your site by allowing it to become optimized and very search engine friendly so you can reap the rewards of being found by the search engines and new customers.

Does Your Ecommerce Site Have Poison Words?

Getting found on the web is very important to your success as an online business. How can you make a mint online if people can't find you?

There is a good deal of bad and outdated information on the internet for getting your site found by the search engines and even ways to raise the relevance of your site through the clever use of certain words on your webpage.

There is another group of words called stopwords. They are words that are used so often on the web that when spiders come to index your website for the search engines and directories, they simply skip over them to save clutter and space in the indexing process. A few of those words would be: the, is, and, or, website, homepage, and email.

However, poison words will hurt your page ranking and get you buried so deeply within the search engine results, your website won't be found by potential customers. A few of the words to watch out for include: Adult words which will put your site in an adult category on most search engines and many people who use adult filtering options in their website searches won't ever see your webpage. Another meaning of poison words to a search engine spider will make certain words drive down your webpage's relevance if the words don't match the genre of the website at large.

Words that can lower your website's relevance if repeated all over a webpage include : links, search engine, directory and directories. The only thing that will stop a search engine from considering these as poison words is if they have relevance to the industry of your website. If you have a website that offers a directory posting service, obviously you won't be penalized for using the word repeatedly around your website because it is relevant to your site as a whole. The strongest place a search engine considers a poison word is when it appears in the title or URL of the website.

If you feel your website isn't getting visibility or you need some help deciphering if you have poison words or keywords on your page that aren't working for your ecommerce business, take a minute and talk to the pros at Merchandizer and they will help you optimize your website for maximum visibility on the worldwide marketplace the Internet has become.

The End of the Shopping Cart - The Check Out Page

Once you've set up your online business and you've done your niche market research to determine exactly where your ecommerce business is going to fit in, you know where to target your marketing to maximize sales, you have gotten a professional looking website and you are ready to go. At least you think so.

Now you need to think about payment gateways and shopping carts. You're going to need to collect payments for the products you sell, and life itself dictates you can't be online and attending your website 24-hours a day, 7-days a week. You must set up an automated system to collect payments and process orders. If you've looked around at some of the shopping cart programs, you've noticed that most of them are little more than glorified database programs that cost an arm and a leg. When you're in a start up mode of a fledgling ecommerce business, you want the most for your money and that's where Merchandizer comes in.

Check out their shopping cart solutions and you will find that they have a lot of features on a fully functioning shopping cart program and best of all the check out page is easy for people and appealing to the public at large. 80% of lost ecommerce sales are due to the customer being unsatisfied with the final check out page at the merchant's website.

If you're curious how the ecommerce shopping cart solutions work at Merchandizer, you can test drive one right now and see how seamlessly it can work from start to finish, giving your customers a very positive shopping experience. Online sales are on the rise and fast, and you need to get a good shopping cart program in place to capitalize on this growth and enjoy the successful ecommerce business you had in mind all along.

Protecting Your Ecommerce Business From Chargebacks and Delivery Fraud

You may or not have heard the term "chargeback" before. If you are going to accept credit cards on your website, 99.9% of your transactions will be positive, pleasant and profitable. However, there may come a time when you deal with the word "chargeback". Essentially, it means someone that used a credit card to purchase goods or services on your website wants their money back and the payment has been deducted (charged back) from your merchant account. Chargebacks won't get you in trouble with your credit card processor, in fact they don't mind them at all, since they get to assess a chargeback fee, they rake in additional money on those transactions. So, what steps can you take to make sure you don't find yourself in that situation?

Your shopping cart program and payment gateway from Merchandizer are stoutly protected against credit card fraud, the CVV technology and verification of credit cards in this manner before purchases are made greatly eliminates this problem. You can additionally protect yourself by adding a disclaimer to your site that your customer agrees to charges and agrees to make payment on them. This disclaimer doesn't mean the charge can't be disputed at a later date, however just having that disclaimer on your site will discourage those very few customers you might run across once in a blue moon that just buy and return items on a regular basis.

Another way to protect your ecommerce business from fraud is to enlist the services of a nationally known delivery service that can be tracked. There are a few individuals out there that will order a product and swear until they are blue in the face they never got it, if you send your products with a delivery confirmation, you will be covered and it's going to be difficult for your customer to dispute the fact he signed for his order.

Almost each and every one of your customers will be a legitimate and honest individual, however, you must protect yourself against those very few individuals who don't have your ecommerce company's best interests in mind, and with a little knowledge on your part, you can be highly protected against having to deal with a situation like that.

When Ecommerce Billing Mistakes Happen

After you have set up your website, shopping cart, and merchant account and you have all your checks and balances in place, you will eventually have to address a billing mistake.

Ecommerce billing mistakes can happen for a myriad of different reasons, they can be something serious like credit card fraud, a simple mistake on the customer's part, such as ordering 2 of a product when they only wanted one, or it could be (though this happens very rarely) computer issues. When you get contacted about a billing error, rather than annoyance at whatever the situation is, look at this as a golden opportunity. This is a fabulous time to do a little customer service and if you handle this issue in a satisfactory manner, you will probably see repeat business from this little financial error.

If the error is due to credit card fraud, tell the customer to immediately to contact their bank and let them know about the fraud. Additionally advise them to contact the three credit bureaus to have a statement put on their file, as often criminals attempt to establish accounts in unsuspecting individual's names.

If the error was simply due to an input error by the customer or computer glitch, you can correct the error immediately and refund the portion of their payment they are due. After doing so, thank them for their business and letting them know about the oversight and additionally, ask if they feel you handled this situation to their satisfaction. If it wasn't, pay attention to the complaint, it's a good way to learn about handling customers. You obviously can't please everyone, but you can learn to make almost each and every one of your customers 100% satisfied, even when mistakes happen.

What Can a Blog Do for Your Company?

If you haven't noticed the trend of various companies to have blogs on their websites, look around from the largest to the smallest, more and more firms are joining the blog revolution.

If you're wondering what's so special about having a blog, it creates a loyal audience for your business if updated regularly with the latest news and other happenings within your company. Additionally, if you have a good following, a blog page can be as powerful as a press release for getting your corporate message out to the masses.

If you have an overage of a product, let your customers know. If you have a new use for a product, again let the people know about it. You might think certain day to day aspects of your business are mundane, but you if you write about it, you will find you have an eager audience ready to read and learn about your little niche in the online world.

And here's the best reason of all to get a blog, if done correctly by professionals, your blog can become the ultimate in spider food for the various search engines and directories. Blogs can be used as a strong part of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) to get your site found by the people who are looking for your company.

The professionals at Merchandizer know SEO and they know how to utilize a blog to its full power to not only help you build a loyal customer following that returns often to your website to read your blog but also to get your site indexed with the highest possible page ranking by the search engines.

If you're interested in jump-starting your online business, look towards adding a blog and let the pros at Merchandizer help you to make your online business the success you know it can be.

What are Merchant Services?

When you're starting your online business you will hear the term Merchant Services bandied around quite a lot. Merchant services are very necessary if you're going to have a successful business on the web, as they allow you to process card payments from your customers.

In the beginning a lot of small businesses, both online and off, will usually run off cash and checks. People are used to the instant nature of the Internet, and many people won't purchase your goods, even if they are a better deal if it requires something cumbersome like printing off and mailing an order form and a check for payment. As a merchant, you are not required to accept credit cards, but you're losing approximately 60% of your online sales by not accepting them.

Most people are accustomed to the "gotta get it now" aspect of online shopping and those impulse shoppers make up a lot of online business purchases. When you are ready to meet the needs of the instant shoppers, you will need to investigate merchant services. It can be daunting to find a credit card payment processor; there are a lot of forms, deposits and other items to go through.

As part of their client services, Merchandizer can shop around your business to various merchant services and get you the best deal for your individual needs. Merchandizer can supply you with an easy to implement and use shopping cart program, but you'll still need a way to process all the sales you get, and that's where the merchant services will be needed. After you get a merchant account, you'll really in business!

Picking A Name For Your Online Business

When you're ready to enter the world of ecommerce, you will need a name for your business. Your business name won't make or break your company, but it is important that you pick a name that instills confidence in your customers and is easy to spell and find on the web.

Someone with the name candellz.com isn't going to be a seller of candles at first glance. Ditto with super cutesy names, also watch out with the overly phonetic spellings, they can work against you. Remember, your company name projects your image of your firm to everyone that sees it, give it a little thought and if you need some consultation on what a search engine friendly ecommerce name for your company might be, talk to the pros at Merchandizer.com. Also, for ease of communication, you may refer to your business by its initials, but the public-at-large won't have a clue that CGI means Candles and Gifts, Inc. When you're considering a webname , unless you own ABC or IBM, skip the acronyms.

If your company has a specialty, promote it in your chosen name! People want specialized services, you came to Merchandizer because you wanted the best help in ecommerce for your online business, likewise when people are looking for an expert in your niche market, they will come to you if you advertise your site with what you really know. Avoid hyphenated words if you can. Many people have difficulty remembering websites with hyphenated names. Last but not least, check the availability of the website you seek.

Merchandizer has consultants on hand to help you with all your ecommerce needs, from the start up to the installation of your shopping cart programs to any questions you might have - they want you to be a rousing success on the web and will work hard with you to make it happen.

Distractions That Can Ruin Your Home Based Ecommerce Business

You had a great idea, you got a cool site designed by Merchandizer. Your shopping cart is in place and you have a great merchant account set up. People are starting to find your new site on the various search engines and directories and you finally feel the true freedom of running an ecommerce business from your home.

Enter the things that can ruin your business if you let it. Because you are still technically at home, you will still have to make some changes so others understand you work during the day just like they do (and sometimes at night).
Your ecommerce system will take orders and run seamlessly, but customers still have questions, need help and sometimes just want to know there's a real person behind the website so they feel comfortable dealing with you.

Here are the top distractions for your home business:

Your family. You're at home and so are they. Kids will bust in during business phone calls and ask you to settle arguments, where is the cereal and can they go to a friend's house? This might make you seem more human to some clients, it will put other clients off. The solution is to post a set of rules for your office area and make sure everyone understands no yelling, no interrupting and no horseplay when you're talking to clients.

Errands and housework is another big one. It's tempting to drop what you're doing and clean the floors, go through the drawers and run errands when you need to be doing work for your ecommerce business. Set yourself work hours and set aside short periods of time for errands and if the kids are old enough, set up a schedule for them to help with the housework in exchange for an allowance.

Weight gain. 80% of all home business owners find they put on weight during their first year of business. It's easy to get up and get a snack every time you walk past the fridge, try to find something else to do besides eating snack.

Turn off your instant messenger. Your friends that have Internet access in their offices will suddenly decide you have time to chat all day. Don't get caught in the trap. It's more fun to chat with friends, but your ecommerce business needs your full attention and you need to market, fill orders and make sure everything is running smoothly.

Just making a few changes will allow you to push your ecommerce business to its full potential and realize you really were made to run your own business from home!