Ecommerce Wisdom

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It may not be the fanciest page of your website, but it’s an essential one. Sitemap is considered to be the directory of your online store. A text-based site map provides both users and search engines with a structured list of all of the sub-pages contained within the main domain of your site, along with links to each page. When incorporated correctly, sitemap can provide online businesses with a range of revenue-boosting advantages:

• Increases the visibility of all pages of your website (for users and search engines)
• Provides a straightforward navigation structures and helps customers find the product, service, or information they’re looking for.
• Allows you the opportunity to embed targeted search keywords and phrases within each page link, helping to boost your site’s organic search rankings for those terms
• Makes it easier for search engines to follow all of your site’s links, ensuring that all inner pages of your website are spidered.
• Helps in the monitoring and correcting of broken links

Be consistent in designing your sitemap with the other pages of the site. This electronic search spider is actually a bot which collects data and copies content to be stored in the search engine’s database when keywords are fed into the search dialogue box. It is not merely a random listing of links, but organized in such a way that it gives the web user an idea of how all the information that can be found in the site fits into an outline or framework.

What purpose does a sitemap serve? What are the benefits of having a sitemap for my website? This is to make sure that the spider starts searching from your homepage down to all the pages listed in your sitemap. You would probably think that there must be something wrong with the search engine that it generated irrelevant results. Use a recurring design and the same HTML template for all pages to establish identity and build character to your website.

Based on the results of a 1999 SURL study on sitemap designs, the full categorical format is most preferred by users since it is easier to search for topics within the site and it allows easier comparison between and among categories. In this way, no page would be left unvisited by the spider.

More often than not, ecommerce websites’ success depends on how good it looks rather than how good it is. Consumers often judge how professional and how trustworthy an online store is through its aesthetics. There are many online retailers that are expert in their field but not necessarily expert in web development or graphic design. They know all about the products they sell, but they may not know much about, things like white space, alpha transparency, or PHP. Thus, hiring a web developer or web designer is needed.

Consider these 5 simple tips on how to choose a good designer/developer.

1. If you were opening a new department store and you were hiring a contractor to build it from the ground up, you would ask for references. No one would trust a commercial construction project to someone they hadn’t checked out. The same goes for the contractor that will be building your online store. Ask for at least three references. You would want the know the quality of their work, how they manage and maintain schedules and how easy they were to work with.
2. In any online business, an ecommerce shopping cart is a must. It serves as a backbone of your business. It is the content management, reporting tool, order processing that you’ll be left with after your designer is off to other projects. Compare carts based on their features and based on your clients needs. Once you have finalized the field of shopping carts, look for designers that specialize in the cart you want. Avoid any cart that promises you that it can have your store up and running in an hour or less. It will be very satisfactory in the long run.
3. Hire a professional that can transform your business objectives into a successful design, not the one that simply does what you say. The web designer or developer you hire should be an expert that can translate your goals and objectives into a feature-rich, customer-pleasing online shopping experience. If a designer or developer has nothing to add or does not ask a lot of probing questions about your business values, differentiators, and goals, they are either not really interested or they are not really informed. He/she should have an opinion to contribute and should add value.
4. Get a statement of work before you start with your project. A statement of work should detail the designer’s understanding of your project, spell out an estimated time table, enumerate the exact services the professional will be providing, and provide a specific price estimate as well as an estimate of how extensions or expansions to the project will be handled. If a developer or designer cannot describe the project in a statement of work, don’t hire them. It would be like trekking through the wilderness without a map or a GPS.
5. Web design and development is often a trade of the self-taught. So while a designer with a master’s degree in art should certainly know his stuff, don’t overlook a self-taught professional. If you judged him only by his academic credentials, you’d be missing out on a great professional. Experience and talent is more important than a degree.

Your website is crucial to the success of your business. By doing extensive interviewing of potential website designers and with the help of the tips mentioned above, you’re more likely to pick one that can do the work you want.