The Art of Making the Perfect E-Commerce Website - Avoid The Designing Black Holes

This is guest post by Albert Vaung
When you are designing an eCommerce website, there are no half measures. Your eyes need to be on the ball, all the time. You cannot afford any laxity when it comes to design. This is because more than anything else, the design of an eCommerce site is all about getting the attention of the target audience and creating an environment, wherein they are willing to part with their hard earned money. A website that can attract visitors, but has a very minimal conversion ratio is regarded a failure.
So, this begs the question – What’s the art of creating that perfect eCommerce website? Well, the answer is pretty simple, really and that is ‘Don’t fall into the black holes that are waiting to swallow you, every step of the way, when you are designing an eCommerce site. But you can only avoid them if you are able to identify them.



Here is a list of some of the design mistakes that eCommerce web designers need to avoid to bring forth the perfect website:

Forgetting that it is all about the products

You won't believe it, but there are some designers who actually forget to provide an interesting, intuitive, unique and detailed product information. Yes, I am sure you must have come across certain websites that have product information just for the heck of it. As a designer, you need to make sure that the prospective shopper is able to interact with the product that in many different ways, even though it's on the website. Even if the shopper cannot touch or feel the product, he/she must be able to experience it through the images on display, the in-depth and pertinent product information,  and anything else that you can put up on the product description pages (videos, audio) that will give the shopper a better understanding of what the product is all about.
The whole idea behind product description is to offer users a chance to make an informed decision regarding the product displayed.

Oops, I forgot the Contact Details

Only those designers who are not really serious about their website,  its products and services and the online business it represents, will hide the much needed contact information from website visitors.
They don’t want users to dig deeper into what the company is all about, but what about the online businesses that truly want to make their presence felt in the online world? If a designer forgets/hide contact information on such sites, then the credibility and profitability of the site take a direct hit. Every online shopper wants to know whether they are dealing with a company that is trustworthy, because at the end of the day, they will only part with their credit card information, if they are assured about the site’s credibility. As can be imagined, lack of contact information dilutes the trust factor big time and such website design ends up a failure.

Navigation that Lacks the ‘C’ Factor

The best website design, especially from the navigation perspective is one that makes, the navigation more ‘convenient’, yes forget about the X factor, it's actually the ‘C’ factor that determines the success or failure of the website. If your commerce website’s navigation is all over the place, there is no way in the world, that your target shoppers are going to buy from your site. Designers, at times, try to go overboard with their creativity, when they are designing the navigation for their online storefront. It’s important to remember that in such cases that the shoppers won't be appreciative of this fact. All they want to do, is search for their products, browse the various product categories, go through the product description and finally complete the shopping cycle effortlessly. They are not looking for creativity here, in fact what they are looking for is simplicity.

To Conclude

There is no shortage of black holes when it comes to designing eCommerce websites. If you fall into one of these, there is no coming back. But, on the other hand, if you manage to avoid them, you are creating an environment, when the success of the website is assured.

About Guest Blogger

Albert Vaung works with PLAVEB a Leading E-commerce Solutions Provider company that is also renowned for its web application development services. He is a web designer who has worked on a whole range of diverse project requirements for different business domains. He also loves writing about his designing experiences and sharing them with other like minded people. Oh Yes! And he loves binging on donuts as well!

How to test new template without affect to your main blog

Many people mail me ask me for solving error when installing new template . They installed template in their main blog and every error occured may affect to their site performance . So in this post , I would like to show you the way for testing new template with all data from your main blog ,but do not affect to main blog performance .


1, Create a new blog for testing

2, Export all data from your main blog :
Go to Blogger Dashboard of your main blog -> Settings -> Other > Export blog
This function will export all posts and comments in your blog to an xml file .

3, Import your data to new blog
Go to Blogger Dashboard of your test blog - > Setting -> Other -> Import blog
A new dialog will apear . Choose the data file (xml format) which you export before to import  then wait for the whole process .

4, After that ,all data from your main blog has been imported to test blog . You can now test your blog with all post setting ,all widgets ,scripts ,and functions of your new template .

When you finish your editing , the test blog is reflection of your main blog after changing to new template . Now you can use the template in test blog to main blog . The cutover time from old to new template will be short and it doesn't affect to your main blog performance whenerver you make a change or test .
The most important thing is to back up and keep track in each steps . You must be very clear on what changes you made ,what script you added , so we can do draw back whenever error occured . It's very hard for you - the blog owner and ours - who are willing to help - in solving error if we don't know what you did .

SEO Tips for Image Optimization On Any Website

Search engine optimization is the number one factor in getting your page ranked and noticed. This helps to ensure people view your website and that Google and other search engines rank it as a valuable piece of the internet. While most people know about the basics needed to optimize a page many are at a loss as to what to do about images. For a long time many webmasters just left images as they were and didn’t factor them into optimization, but times are changing. Image tags, especially with the advent of image searches, can be useful for SEO purposes, if you know how to use your keywords effectively. Below you will find a few tips and tricks to properly optimizing your images.

File Names

The file name does matter. Many people forget how important file names are when trying to optimize an image. The keyword or keywords should always appear in the file name. Rename any and all files to reflect what thepicture is or what the website is associated with. For example, if you are looking to garner attention about the genetics of eye colors a picture of blue eyes should be named “blue_eyes_genetics.jpg”. This will help grab attention and allow your image to come up in image searches. When image file names are left as a simple string of numbers they will come up muchlower in search engines, if at all.

 Content Connection and Integration

While it seems like a good idea to stuff websites full of images the images should always have some connection to the website content. If you are writing about dog breeds having pictures of sunrises and cars is not going to help you get visitors. Sure, it will gain you some quick viewers, but if you are looking to engage readers your images should be associated with your content. The image and the content must line up for search engine bots to truly crawl the site accurately. Be sure to keep in line with your content regarding the images you choose to host and you will find your site will quickly rise in the rankings. The goal is not to just gain viewers. It is to engage viewers and keep them coming back for more.

 Alt Text

 Alt text is how search engine bots figure out what your image is about. You should make sure the alt text is a solid description of what the image is about. If you are using an image as a click through to another page you should make sure the alt text describes the page that the image links too. Strong, descriptive alt text helps search engine bots categorize your images correctly and efficiently. The better the descriptor the quicker your images will be appropriately categorized. Alt texts should contain the important information about the image. If it is a logo image the name of the company plus the word Logo will do the trick.

 Overstuffing Keywords

This tip might seem counterintuitive but it is important not to stuff the anchor text or Alt text with keywords. You want to describe the content and optimize it for your users and search engine bots. Overstuffing the file name, or anchor text with keywords will mess up the algorithm and distract search engine bots. The stuffing of keywords will also make for a difficult viewing experience for your readers. Essentially overexerting your keyword power will do the opposite of what search engine optimization is supposed to do.

Less is More

The final trick is another counterintuitive one; keep your images to a minimum unless you are a photography website. Sure, images look great, but the SEO gods only speak text. Alt text, file names and even Meta tags can help your images gain relevancy, but text always reigns supreme in the land of search engine optimization. Simply put your images should be an accoutrement of your site; it should not be the main star. Armed with these tips and tricks most web master should have no problem optimizing their images in such a fashion that it will actually help their page rank. In the past images seemed unimportant to webmasters, but today images are a serious part of the equation that must be considered.

About guest blogger

Cindy Jacobson is an online freelance writer with over 10 years of experience writing for larger
advertisers on the web. Advertisers such as PrBlog, EnGadget, Verizon and many others. She
currently is writing about Att uverse coupon news within the U.S and Canada.