eCommerce Simplicity

In the last 6 months, I have been closely paying attention to the development and maturation of Magento Commerce - the latest and by far greatest open source eCommerce solution. After implementing it on a few development domains here at Trinity, I quickly realized that this solution is head and shoulders above OS Commerce - the long standing king of open source eCommerce platforms.

Even in a standard installation, with no customization from a technology perspective, I was blown away at the level of functionality that is provided. Here are some snapshots of what this software can provide.

• Catalog Promotional Pricing by percentage or fixed amount with ability to restrict to stores, categories, products
• Free Shipping Option
• Multi-Tier Pricing for quantity discounts
• Customer Group-specific pricing and group-specific tier pricing
• Landing Page Tool for Campaigns
• Search Engine Friendly URL’s
• URL Rewrites
• Recently Viewed Products
• Recently Compared Items
• New Items Promotional Tool
• Up-sells in Shopping Cart
• Cross-sells on product pages
• Send to a Friend for all visitors, or registered users only
• Send Wishlist to a Friend by Email or RSS
• RSS Feeds for New Products, New Specials and New Tags

Wow. I know many enterprise level platforms that do not have this type of functionality. Most impressive to me was the ajax based cart page that allows a user to progress through a transaction without having a page load as well as the guided navigation functionality that is allowed to be customized through the back end by aligning attributes to the taxonomy.

What is a bit of a challenge at this stage is finding developers for the software. Being that is so new to the marketplace, you have to hunt to find someone with experience.

I highly recommend loading the software on a domain and having some fun with the customization capabilities. If you want to see it in action, and view the homepage UI with an integrated multivariate testing solution (google optimizer), check out Skateboarding Direct

Ok, so you probably have absolutely no idea what I am talking about from the title of this post.  Don’t worry, hopefully after reading the rest of this, you will gain a better understanding of a new development within affiliate marketing which is going to change the dynamics of search engine optimization.

First, lets look back in history.  Affiliate links (ie links from other sites to yours within a advertising network) did not typically help natural search rankings.  Typical affiliate links would go straight to a link network (ex. http://cj.com/t_a.php?id=00292282) and get re-directed to your site.  Because of the tracking parameters within the URL string, as well as the fact that the incoming visit was based from a re-direct, affiliate programs did nada in helping out merchants in organic search efforts.

One company has changed that however.  A company called Link Connector has created a technology that allows affiliate programs to be executed by code that is installed on the server of a merchant.  No longer, does the re-direct need to take place from the affiliate network.

Their technology is called “naked link technology” and essentially allows a web publisher to use a query free outbound link (ex. www.trinityinsight.com). Code on the merchant side when the page loads, communicates affiliate details with Link Connector and drops the cookie on the user.

What does this have to do with SEO?  Well for starters, your affiliate campaign is going to assist in link building.  A website can dramatically improve the speed for which a link campaign is being conducted by using Link Connector.  Link Connector has signed some high profile companies lately such as American Greetings, Gunther, and Wordtracker.  Their publisher network is likely far behind CJ and LinkShare, but their technology makes it worth it to engage.

If you are considering a affiliate program for your marketing efforts, consider Link Connector.  You will be literally killing two birds with one stone… Well ok, maybe not “killing” your link building efforts - but it will be a great supplement to traditional efforts.

Many of Trinity’s clients are new to the notion of tracking web analytics and are unfamiliar with how analytics can help the overall growth of their business. In working with clients, many times we are in the position of recommending and implementing a web analytics solution that is going to meet their needs. We always come to the question - Go with Google, or go with a paid solution…

When making the decision of which way to go, the first step is to understand the level of analysis needed. If the business just wants top line reporting on marketing campaigns and content effectiveness as it relates to the conversion funnel, then Google Analytics will be more than adequate. Google Analytics (previously known as Urchin for those new to the analytic world) provides a on-demand tool to track and monitor your key metrics. It is a great solution for mid-size companies and businesses who are new to analytics.

If your business is more proactive in leveraging analytics internally within your organization - Omniture may be the best bet for you. Due to its flexibility in constructing custom path analysis reports - Omniture provides a level of speed & insight that is un-paralleled in the analytic marketplace. Look for Google to try and become the market leader in this space by incorporating these type of dynamic capabilites, but until then, Omniture is still the king of the web analytics market.

Google Analytics

Its been a crazy last month. Catching up with old friends and making new ones is always a good time and this year’s Shop.org first look and Etail West was no exception.

It seems like the new “hot” thing in Ecom these days is flash and flex technology to provide a seamless experience for the shopper in both browsing & ordering. When saying seamless, I am trying to convey that pages are not reloading but rather its just one continuous flow throughout the store experience.

Im not sure however that the mainstream consumer is ready for these types of sites. Humans by nature are creatures of habit and we are hard to break of those habits, especially when we are comfortable. These new tech vendors who are promoting their technologies as the next big thing have to realize that both retailer and vendor adoption will be fairly slow. Retailers are going to be apprehensive in leaving the standard Home - Category - Sub Category - Product Page progression and consumers will need time to truly embrace flash within an eCommerce environment.

Flash can be great to utilize for merchandising at the category level, but having a complete site in flash can be a challenge at the Analytic and SEO level. Finding solutions to these hurdles is something Trinity is looking into right now - stay posted for more info…

 Tags

<a href=http://www.technorati.com/flash+seo rel=”tag”>Flash SEO</a>

I admit that I am getting a little sick of writing about Google on this blog but I must say that the latest development out of Mountain View is going to completely change the Internet and search advertising.

For those who dont know, Google has launched a free service called “Google Wireless” within San Diego. Essentially described as a community outreach program, Google is offering free web access to everyone in the city. The catch is that the viewing must be done through a google interface that displays advertising relevant to the user’s path/clickstream.

What Google has done is that they have purchased fiber lines that were liquidated from the dot com bust and have built a network infrastructure that can support millions of users in California. This model is no doubt going to expand to other metropolitan areas as Google continues to buy fiber in an effort to expand this program.

If Google expands this program to other major cities, they are essentially going to be owning the user experience for a significant portion of the Internet. This will not only allow the media giant to gather a wealth of information about you and I that they will utilize in their further R&D but they will also expose every visitor to adwords listings no matter if you are on Google.com

An interesting development to say the least. Likely a few years out, but other MSN and Yahoo must understand the ramifications if this program expands.

Google Wireless