eCommerce

SEO Checklist For Pre-Launch Ecommerce Sites Part 1

Published: March 18th, 2011

Unlike a normal blog or a website, onsite audits for ecommerce sites can be a mammoth job to undertake. It is always better to go through the site and make sure it is seo compliant BEFORE launching. This is to prevent google from indexing non-optimized pages or worser still, finding countless 404s and duplicated content.

  1. If the ecommerce build is currently on a “dev” subdomain or a sub directory of a site, ensure that it is uncrawlable by password protecting the directory. This is usually the best method instead of adding meta noindex, no follow on page level or blocking bots by the Robots.txt file
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SEO for X-Cart - 4 simple modifications to optimise your store

Published: February 1st, 2011

Recently the majority of e-commerce projects we have been working on here at Blueclaw have been using the x-cart platform and being a company that prides itself on its SEO services we strive to ensure the on-site optimisation of all the sites we produce is top notch.

While producing these sites there are a number of modifications we regularly carry out to the x-cart code to improve its already strong search engine optimisation and in this post and I will share some of my secrets so if you are running an x-cart shop you too can benefit from them.

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My 10 SEO Predictions for 2011

Published: January 5th, 2011

It’s that time of year where everyone speculates and lays down their predictions and I thought what better way to start the New Year than adding my views into the mix.

1. Google Local/Places will be massive this year with many SEO’s offering ‘optimisation’ for this niche field. This is due to the full integration of Google Local/Places (I still don’t know what the true name for this is) into the organic listings for almost any search that includes a place name.

2. The next thing I think will happen… and I’d hazard a guess at this becoming a reality around the end of April 2011, is the integration of Google Local style- non linking citations into the organic rankings algorithm. This will see sites like Yelp becoming more prevalent as emphasis is taken off links and anchor text and reputation taking a stand and being counted. After all Google is interested in showing high quality results, and what better ‘quality’ than sites that have independent citations.

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UK Christmas Ecommerce Statistics 2010 – Stats for the Xmas Season

Published: January 4th, 2011

At the start of the holiday season the statistics seemed positive with Black Friday (mainly USA) and Cyber Monday seeing growth of 16% and 13% on last year respectively. This pointed towards a favourable Christmas sales period with growth expected to continue the trend of 10% growth year on year.

Boxing Day 2010 was the one busiest day for online retailers ever with almost 14% of traffic being traced back to ecommerce activity (the lowest two points being mid and late March). This is a 4% improvement over previous years. It is speculated that this is due to snow/travel issues throughout the re-Christmas period and the impending VAT increase due to start January 2011. In fact since the 12th December online sales were already waning plummeting from a healthy 12% to 9% throughout this time however this may also be attributed to issues with pre Christmas delivery.

Top retailers during this period include:

Retailer Traffic Share
John Lewis 2.05%
Ikea 0.4%
B&Q 0.45%

Popular auction and classified sites eBay and Gumtree saw significant rises in traffic during this period as many people look to pass on unwanted gifts
Top retailers for the Christmas period of 2010 are as follows:

Retailer Traffic Share
Amazon UK 7.02%
Argos 3.53%
Next 2.19%
M&S 1.98%
John Lewis 1.89%
Currys 1.81%
Debenhams 1.71%
Play.com 1.71%
Comet 1.4%
River island 0.86%
PC World 0.84%
New Look 0.79%
House of Fraser 0.77%
Topshop 0.76%
ASOS 0.74%
GAME 0.71%

Overall sales trends looked positive with apparel and accessories peaking at around a 31% increase, closely followed by Home & garden at around 11% with Video & games following at 9%. Electronics bucked this trend with figures across the board showing an approximate 7% loss in share probably due to sales of iPad’s being purchased earlier in the year held over for Christmas presents .

Sources: Hitwise

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Online Sales Roar During Cyber Monday 2010

Published: November 30th, 2010

With Christmas four weeks away the biggest American Internet shopping event took place yesterday, standing strong amongst the challenges of a testing economic climate. Online sales surged nearly 20% from last year, according to findings from an analytics group released Tuesday. NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com)

Consumers connected with their favourite websites to purchase goods at reasonable and tempting prices. From women’s underwear to electronic equipment, the offers online were hard to refuse and online retailers enticed money spenders with unmissable offers and incentives such as free delivery and 15% off voucher codes. Shoppers used mobile devices to make their purchases, with nearly 4% of all Cyber Monday shoppers using smart-phones to purchase quickly and efficiently.

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