Determining the most profitable keywords for an e-commerce based business is without question one of the best way to drive targeted traffic and increase conversion. Specifically as it relates to PPC marketing which can make or break an online business. Unfortunately, many small online businesses have no clue how to manage a PPC campaign which includes determining profitable keywords, determining profit and more importantly ROI. What often times ends up happening is that shopping cart software clients spend a enormous amount of money on general keywords obtain a decent amount of traffic, but have very poor conversions. In technical terms their CPA (cost per action) is extremely low.  Short of hiring an online marketing firm there are a few things small business owners can do to improve their current PPC problem, and the simple answer is determining the correct keywords.

There are a variety of simple and cost effective  methods to obtain profitable keywords for any industry.  Keyword research could be broken down in to three basic steps. Use online keyword tools,  spy on your competitors keywords and most importantly research what keywords a  potential customer would use to find your product. If you're not understanding how this works don't worry I will explain each step in a bit more detail.

Online Keyword Tools - This option is great for clients who have money to spend on a monthly subscription. Sites like Keyword Discover and Wordtracker provide great research results if used correctly, but might hit your pocket book where it hurts. In addition to these online research tools almost every PPC program offers a keyword discovery tool which is free of charge. Although not as thorough as the paid option they can be beneficial  in determining the amount of visitors to expect.

Spying on your eCommerce Competitors - Browsing competitor sites is a good way of determining what keywords might be useful for your own business. There are two things to look for First, look at the keywords in the meta tags, but be aware that these keywords are usually the general terms and not the profitable specific keywords you want to target. Secondly, examine your competitors pages and look for specific keyword terms in addition I like to run a keyword density report on a site. There are several free sites which will do this for you, but I highly recommend Seochat's keyword density tool this will give you a clear picture of specific keywords words to examine.

What Potential customers might search for - I purposely made this the last technique because it makes use of the top two straagies. Basically you want to pull out a notepad and start brain storming keyword variations which a search engine user would use if they wanted to find your company's product or service. It's a good idea to use the keywords you developed with the online keyword tools and spying on the competition to act as a starting point. Generally more specific keywords result in higher conversion and lower bid amounts.

Pay-per-click marketing should be a marketing strategy for just about every e-Commerce store owner. On the surface PPC can appear to be a rather simple and straightforward process however, to maximize ROI (return on investment) a shopping cart software owner usually comes to the realization that PPC is more than just a bidding and clicking system, but rather requires specific marketing techniques in order to maximize traffic and visitors. Often times, it becomes profitable to hire an external firm to manage the entire process, but since many small online businesses don't have a budget to hire a firm all the internet marketing is learned and executed in house. This being said there are specific techniques out there that very few merchants are taking advantage of. In this post I will cover several techniques and tips which if implemented properly  may boost not only your conversion, but will decrease your PPC spending.
 
Seasonal Keywords - It should go without saying that keywords are one of the  most important factor when it comes to setting up a PPC campaign. However, what many merchants often don't pay attention to are seasonal keywords. Let me explain if I was in the business of selling sunglasses I would bid on all the sunglass manufacture brand names as well as generic terms to capture the proper internet traffic for my sunglass eCommerce site. Seasonal keywords are targeted  keywords for specific holidays like "mother's day sunglass sale" or "Christmas sunglass blowout" often times when a PPC campaign is running on auto pilot eCommerce store owners neglect to invest the time in discovering profitable seasonal keywords.

In the next post I will cover landing pages, ad copy and evolving a stale PPC strategy.

Evolving the marketing of an eCommerce store can seem like an expensive and troublesome task for many small online businesses.  Often times WebCart customers say "I am paying for a shopping cart software solution, what I can do with it to increase my current business?" There is a lot WebCart shopping cart software customers can do with their existing carts without spending a fortune on customization and marketing.

Analytics - Pay close attention to which products or services are receiving the most clicks. With WebCart's built in analytic tools discovering which pages receive the most hits is a snap. Additionally, pay close attention to which products are being sold the most.  With this data in hand I recommend putting the popular products up on the first page so they are in clear view to anyone coming to your site. The data collected from the page views I recommended adjusting and researching why the page received so many clicks, but not as many sales. Perhaps a competitor is selling the same product at a lower rate, or the product description, image or title is not clear.
 
Product Customization - It's no marketing secret that making your customers feel unique is a great way to increase sales. The same concept can be applied to your products.  For starters, it's a good idea to enable a wizard for online shoppers to use in order to find the perfect gift. Let me give you an example, using selling shoes online. An online visitor would first click the wizard, and a page would come up asking them what type of activity they are planning on using shoes for. It could be things like running, basketball cross training etc. The next screen could have a list of more specific questions like what color style or brands they want. The process would continue until the online visitor receives a custom recommendation based on their styles. This tool alone has been proven to increase conversation by leaps and bounds.

Many aspiring e-Commerce store owners will need to eventually use  a merchant service company in order to  enable the processing of credit cards.  A simple Google search for merchant services brings up about 21,000,000 results.  Many eCommerce newbie's ask , "what is the criteria for choosing a merchant service for my shopping cart software?"  There really is no one answer, and I highly recommend researching your shopping carts requirements as well as searching the internet for information about what an online store owner might need in a credit card processer. That being said, there are some universal features a majority of people should consider.

Global Customers - If a business plans to sell to an international marketplace it's important to obtain a merchant account which is capable of processing international credit cards.

Account Deposit Duration - It's a good idea to ask a credit card processing company how long it takes for the funds generated from credit card sales to be deposited in to the bank. My experience has varied over the years with some companies waiting upwards of 1 week while others taking only a couple of days.

eCommerce Security - Obviously security should be a top concern in setting up a store because the information which needs the most protection is the passing of credit card information from the client computer to the  credit card processing company. Always inquire on  the general security policy and ask if their system supports anything beyond the standard 128-bit digital certificate.  Additionally, a PCI-ompliant system  is a definite plus eCommerce owners should consider.

Fee Structure - Many credit card companies will try to entice you with low rates, and fail to mention any sort of transaction fee or charge back fees. Before you sign on the dotted line make sure you have a clear understanding of how much everything will cost you. Receiving a bill with charges and fees that were not expected is never a good  thing.

Fraud exposure Tools - Before an order comes though the web a shopping cart software owner's first line of defense is to have tools in place which will search for a number of variables, and detect red flags as they relate to potential fraud.  A company like Practice Pay Solutions offers a great software package for about 5.00 a month which is very little considering the consequences.

Fax / Email Confirmation - If an order is suspect or large it's generally a good practice to email the customer and politely ask them to fax or email a copy of their credit card. Although many thieves are now able to manufacture fake credit cards this method does add an additional layer of reassurance of the orders legitimacy.

Investigate Your Orders - All too often eCommerce store owners are so excited by large orders, that they neglect to analyze what the order really means. A great example would be an order for 10 identical notebook computers.  Perceptibly, this can be an order from a large company looking to purchase laptop computers, but it can also be a thief who is trying to capitalize on a stolen credit card.

Call Merchant Services - You know those terminal and processing fees you pay? Those fees allow your processing company to staff up on friendly customer service staff to help you. Therefore, it's important that business owners get what they pay for and use the merchant services bank to verify, inquire or simply ask for advice on questionable credit card orders.

Analyze The Bank Identification Numbers - The first 6 numbers of any credit card are the banks unique identification numbers.   The reason these numbers are important is because they can tell the merchant using them where the bank is located. To find the bank location visit All net tools and type in the 6 digits in to the Online Bin Database. If the country of the bank is different from the country where the product is supposed to be shipped to then a red flag should go off immediately. 

It goes without saying that CVV and address verification should be done, but these 4 tips will help your company root out any fraud that may slip through the cracks.

Shopping cart software by all means has revolutionized the way commerce is done around the world. However, like anything else bad people are always looking for new ways to exploit the system of selling things online. Besides for your everyday hackers there is a new breed of thief's who use stolen credit cards to purchase goods from eCommerce sites.  Usually, the eCommerce business owner ends up taking the loss sometimes losing thousands of dollars in merchandise.

A shopping cart client of WebCart recently went through a bombardment of fraud, and unfortunately lost thousands of dollars which she will probably never see again. To understand how to protect oneself from fraud it's very important to know how these  thief's operate.  The first part of the scam is to get a victims  credit card information. Perhaps you heard of  "phishing" which has become an extremely popular scam over the last few years. More often then not a credit card theif will use phising to capture inexperienced web users credit card information, billing address, CVV number, and other personal information.

Once the thief  has a credit card  the hard part is over. Usually they use the credit card owners real name billing address and have products shipped to an alternative address.  Sometimes this address is in the US,  but sadly often times it's not and creates a new set of issues for merchants who try to recover the stolen goods.  Regrettably, this is exactly wh at happened to our client, and she learned a very serious lesson.

In the next post I will talk about a few simple things eCommerce store owners can do to protect them from falling victim to credit card fraud.

A common overlooked usability technique within eCommerce site design is the ability for customers to print product, category and/or content pages.  With a majority of shopping cart software incorporating fluid design with CSS it's vital to make certain that online visitors will be able to print your site pages. There are many benefits to having online pages printer friendly. For starters it's part of good usability standards, but more importantly it can lead to an increase in sales and exposure. Often time's people print products to show relatives who otherwise would not be able to view them because of not having a computer. However, what tends to happened more often is people print products and articles with their PDF writer for later viewing. Therefore, it's imperative that users have the option of printing web pages within your site.

Making a site printer friendly usually requires adjusting html, css, div or table code. Often times no matter how much a person tweaks the code the pages don't adjust or the design takes a dramatic change. The answer to this type of situation is creating a separate printer friendly page which can be formatted in simple text, and works beautifully in any printer. Although this may seem like a simple solution it does come with hazards that need to be addressed before creating a separate printing page.

The major issue with a second printing page is duplicate content. Even though no one can say for sure what search engine algorithms penalize for duplicate content, it's safe to say that they don't like it. In fact I have personally seen sites dropped in ranking because of duplicate content, and once the duplicate content was removed their rankings came back. The method I recommend to my shopping cart software clients is to add a simple no follow tag in to the print page link. In addition, to add an extra layer of protection I suggest putting all the "printer friendly" pages in to a designated directory, and restrict search engine spider access via the robots. By following these simple rules your eCommerce site will keep the look you want without sacrificing usability or ranking. 

1. Are there integrated up-sell modules?
The more products you sell the more money you are going to make.  Not every person that makes a purchase will buy something when you offer additional related products.  However, there are many times that you can make additional sales by up-selling to customers.  This feature in some shopping cart software can make you a lot of money.

2. Are there integrated sales reports database?
To eliminate the hassle of having to print off sales reports and enter them into a database, it is extremely convenient when you find shopping cart software that comes with a sales and prospect database.

3. Can it work with multiple websites with no extra charge?
Many online business owners have multiple websites that they promote various products from.  It can be expensive if you have to get separate licenses and separate merchant accounts for each website.  Most carts today run on their own servers, so there is no expensive installation and set up is almost immediate.

4. Does it have a pop-up box builder?
Although annoying, pop-ups can still reel in customers from time to time for your ecommerce business.

5. Are there printable off-line order forms?
In a time where people are becoming more and more knowledgeable online, identity theft is something on many people's minds that shop online.  Because of this, many people are still afraid to disclose their credit card numbers into a website.  This is an extremely important feature to look into with shopping cart software.

6. Does it offer customizable Thank You pages?
The more personal you are the more customers feel you are reaching out specifically to them.

The shopping cart software that you purchase for your ecommerce business may make or break your business.  The better your shopping cart is set up and the easier it is to get around, the more business you will generate.  Here are 4 questions you should have answered before purchasing shopping cart software.

1. Will it calculate shipping and tax?

2. Does it offer customizable return to shopping pages
The best way to make a lot of money from your ecommerce business is through follow-up sales.  Many standard shopping carts send customers back to the main page after they make a purchase rather than sending them to related products that they are most likely to purchase next.

3. Does it deliver receipt and confirmation e-mails automatically?
After purchasing something from your ecommerce business, customers want to know that their purchase did in fact go through.  The better shopping cart software on the market offers this feature telling customers immediately that the purchase went through.

4. Does it have a web-based administration page?
This is important because it will allow you to work on your cart from any computer that has internet access.  There is nothing more frustrating then being stranded from making adjustments to your shopping cart just because you're not near your computer.

Once the article is written it's time to mass distribute it. The beauty of the internet is that mass distribution is not only instantaneous, but it is also targeted. In case you're getting confused let me explain what I mean. Although your article will be out there it's worthless unless it's what people are looking for. A metaphor from everyday living would be a clothing store that has piles of clothing, and no organization.  Finding an article of clothing in such a pile would require hours of sorting and searching. However, a store that has clothing divided up in to styles, colors and sizes makes the shopping experience a lot  easier and enjoyable. The same concept is applied for article marketing; if your article is just piled on top of hundreds of other articles then the potential exposure and  marketing becomes virtually worthless.  

In order for internet users to find your article they would visit article directories which usually a) review your article for quality and b) Insert it in to a proper category. By doing this, online visitors are able to easily find information in the category of their choosing. To the best of my knowledge there are over 300+ article directories on the web. Submitting to each of these directories would take hours if not days. However, this is an option each eCommerce business owner can exercise. Personally, I choose to use a service which submits all my articles for me. This literally saves me hours a day, and I rest assured that all my articles are being submitted. The service I use is Submit Your Article  which for a small fee does all  the work for me.

One last thing to consider when submitting articles is the resource box which tells the world who you are and what you're all about.  The reason the resource box is important is the ability to add a one or two links (depending on the directory)  back to your site. Here is where you would capitalize on not only linking to your home page, but also to a specific category page. In our previous example of shoes, the store owner would be able to link directly to the and  specific category page which could be something like nike, rebook etc.