Ways that Website Analytics Can Save Your Online Business

Website analytics is probably the last thing an online business owner wants to worry about. With 15 things to do every day before 10 am and another 50 to do before you can call it a day, sitting down in front of a bunch of web traffic stats seems like a waste of time. While I agree with the sentiment, it’s completely wrong. In fact, website analytics should be the first and last thing you review every day and I’ll give you three reasons why:

1. Web Analytics Help You Detect Fraud and Incompetence

Have you hired an SEO expert? PPC marketer? Social media guru? If you have people on staff or retain contractors to help you with your site, website analytics are your best friend.

Forget about the reports these experts create because all stats and data can be manipulated or ommitted. What you need is raw, reliable data to calculate the ROI of the services you are paying for.

Specifically, programs like Google Analytics can help you quickly isolate specific traffic streams and provide a host of useful data to calculate ROI, including:

Conversion Rate of Specific Traffic Channels
Conversion Rate for Specific Targeted Keywords
Average Time on Site for Specific Traffic Streams
Bounce Rate for Specific Traffic Streams

Of course, the conversion rate data for specific traffic streams (or Internet marketing experts) will help you calculate the ROI. But the average time on site will also help provide a rough gauge of overall traffic strength. If a specific traffic channel can’t keep visitors on site for more than 2 minutes, the traffic is either weak or you have significant issues on your landing pages.

2. Web Analytics Help Assess Site Health

To put that another way, web analytics essentially help show you where you need to invest your money most to boost online profits. Specifically, website traffic analytics will help you assess:

A. Traffic Strength
B. Sales Funnel Effectiveness
C. Shopping Cart Function and Conversion Rate
D. Website Conversion Rate and Rates for Specific Services/Products

For instance, high bounce rates and low average time on site typically indicate weak traffic or exceptionally poor landing pages. You can confirm which by looking at the data for specific traffic streams to see if there are significant variations in performance. If there are, then the issue is likely a weak traffic stream but if all channels are doing poorly, it’s more likely to be landing page.

The point is, the data tell you what’s wrong with your site so you can best channel your investment dollars to the most critical areas.

3. Web Analytics Eliminates Needless Split Testing

In most cases, optimization of landing pages and product descriptions is completed via split testing. That is, decide what sales tool you want to test (like a headline or CTA) and then create a new one to split test against. If your new sales tool performs better, conversions will increase and your hard work rewarded. However, this is rarely how it works.

You see, the thing people always forget about split testing is it’s sheer expense. To statistically verify even a lead gen site with a non-monetized CTA, you need at least 1,000 visitors or more to each version.

So if you think a landing page or product description might have problems with the headline, value proposition, and credibility tools, that’s at least 3 tests you need to run at 2,000 visitors per test. At even $1 a click, you can see how that would get very expensive, very quickly.

And the worst part: You have no idea if the headline, value prop, or credibility tools are even suppressing conversions. You are just split testing one sales tool versus a new one and hoping for the best, seriously.

But with web analytics, you can pinpoint the issues and eliminate the guesswork saving loads in unnecessary testing costs and content creation.

In conclusion, web analytics really are vital to your online success because they provide you with an accurate assessment of site health and your investments in traffic generating services. If you don’t know the true health of your site, then how can you possibly know what it needs to grow and be more profitable?

An Ultimate Solution for Magento Store Management for Your Web Store

Plenty of Magento users are satisfied that this shopping cart provides many features which many other shopping platforms do not have. The buyers can write some kind of reviews around different products and read the opinions of other people. The consumers can also do a comparison of various products when making their selection. Dropdown menus are comfortable, especially when you do not have a lot of time. In fact, these are generally the things with regard to consumers. As to online store administrators, Store Manager for Magento has actually been designed for their needs. It is very easy to use, even for the people who do it for the first time. What is more, it definitely saves time and performs some tasks automatically. There are following important features of the Store Manager for Magento.

The first of all that needs to be explained is that this Store Manager assures a safe keeping of your own data. It utilizes SSH port for secure connection. You can make all the necessary modifications locally then when they are made -apply them to the remote data-base. Furthermore, you can back up or reinstate the database.

In relation to the product item and category management, you are able to do all the needed work, including create, modify or delete the data, export and import it to Excel, HTML or.csv files. The product search may be executed easily as there are some advanced search features and multiple filters.

Considering the customer management, the options of creation, edition and also termination are also offered, but there are some more useful options. As an illustration, you can trace the customers’ orders, look for customers by some information about them or you can filter customers by period of time or ordered products. One more thing is that it is possible to manage your client’s wishlist as well as that you possibly can work with a list of all newsletters that he/she receives.

In addition, there are some amazing things which make this Store Manager very comfortable. First of all, it is Wizard which helps a user to do a particular task by choosing the needed option and then by clicking “next”. Another important thing is that there is no delayed update, nor synchronization. All of the modifications you have created are applied to your current store instantly.

As MagneticOne team is always making an effort to improve all their products, they develop several addons to the Store Manager for Magento. Now there is numerous addons available, including Automated Product Import, ICEcat integration for Store Manager, QuickBooks Integration et cetera.

So if you work with Magento but you have not still tried using Store Manager for Magento, it is possible to download its free trial version and then start working with it just now. And if you have certain questions regarding the management of this desktop application, you can find a support center on the official website of Store Manager for Magento which will help you to settle all your questions.

The Purposes of E-commerce Website and Web design

Since the importance of eCommerce website is increasing day by day, the importance of e-commerce web design is also increasing. Before going to discuss about E-commerce web design, everyone should know about e-commerce website, and its purposes. Here are some details of E-commerce Website and Web Design.

Introduction to E-commerce website

E-commerce means “Electronic Commerce”, which term is also used for “selling on the internet” or “online-shopping”. E-commerce is a kind of trading, products or services; which is conducted via the internet. Electronic Commerce includes many categories into a single platform, such as online funds transfer, internet marketing, electronic data interchanging, supply chain management, online transaction processing, and data collecting. Into this awesome business platform a business can receive their orders, sell their products and receive their payments through online. Modern people are well-known with this term, as now they like to get their purchase done from their own home. Thats why; now almost all businesses started building e-commerce website to increase their selling and spread their business to the customers of all over the world. That is why; these business people are giving much importance on eCommerce web design much.

Why do people want to build an E-commerce website?

You may have already known that E-commerce refers to the modern selling method where a business store can sell their products both psychically and digitally. If you have a departmental store in your local area market, you can sell your products to your local customers who used to visit your store physically. But, how can you reach your products to those, who dont have enough time to come into your store. E-commerce web design will help you in this regard. You can sell to the remote customer by offering your website to them. Your customer will visit your shopping site, choose their products and place order to your website. You just need to have a representative team to supply customers products at their home.
From the below list you will be able to know why most of the businesses consider on a successful eCommerce web design.

An e-commerce website enables a business person to get their potential customers worldwide.
E-commerce web design will help you to build your second store in online. So, you can sell your products both to the local customers and remote customers.
Having an electronic commerce website will make you more dedicated to your services. You will get reviews of your existing customers. That means, it is the platform where a seller and a customer can interact even after selling of a product.
It is not possible for a customer to know the details of your business, but with your eCommerce website you can allow your customer to know about your company, its background and the purpose of starting the business.
Your eCommerce website will save your customers valuable time. Modern people are too busy to come to your store to buy their products. An easy-to-use e-commerce web design will help those busier people get their products at hand.
Consider E-commerce Web design before starting your e-commerce website.
Though, it seems easier to start an e-commerce website and sell products to customers, but it requires a lot of tasks. You need to consider on “E-commerce Web design” very carefully. Most of the expert eCommerce businesses emphasize on these following factors. You can also consider on these.
1)The key to success in every electronic business is “content”. It is one of the most important things for a successful e-commerce web design. Using content you can provide useful and interesting information to visit your website and buy products. Update the site with fresh and high quality articles to increase your business sells.
2)Another thing that you need to consider for eCommerce web design is a well-planned structure.
3)The E-commerce website design comes in next. When you have well-written content and well-prepared structure, you should design your eCommerce website by allowing simplicity, consistency and readability.
4)Navigation comes to the 4th place for an excellent E-commerce web design. When it is about sites navigation, dont make it too complex. Make the internal and external link simple and easy-to-use to the customers.
5)”SEO” is another important thing that you should consider for eCommerce web design. It is the best method to increase your selling and getting more potential customers.
E-commerce website is required not only to increase sells, but also for solving customers problems. So, while you are designing an e-commerce website, you should maintain some proper guidelines.

The Most Popular Payment Options For Ecommerce Website

An eCommerce site must always have multiple payment options. If you run a shopping site, and you only have one payment method, you may be leaving thousands of dollars on the table. So what are some of the must-have payment options?

Paypal.

Everyone knows about Paypal. If you are not using Paypal, you are isolating a huge group of people. Paypal is a payment solution that allows its members to make payment without having to use a credit card. The credit card info has already been stored in the Paypal account. All the member has to do, is to login to his or her paypal account when making payment. That means entering an email address and a password. That is far more convenient than having to take out the credit card and enter the credit card numbers into the payment form.

In the event that a customer does not have a Paypal account, he or she can still proceed with payment without having to sign up for an account. In this case, the check out process would be very similar to the usual check out process. The customer will have to enter the credit or debit card number.

In addition, you can easily integrate Paypal into your shopping site as most eCommerce software supports Paypal.

Google Checkout.

Google is becoming a highly competitive player in the payment solutions space. Like Paypal, it also has millions of members. You can easily add Google Checkout buttons to your site by copying and pasting some code snippets.

Google Checkout is especially important if you are promoting your eCommerce site using Google’s very own pay per click advertising system. When you create an add in the system, your ad appears on the right hand side of the search results. If your site supports Google checkout, a small little shopping cart will appear in your ad. Visitors will know that your site supports this payment method just by viewing the ad.

This increases conversion rates because payment by Google checkout is very fast and convenient. For customers who have used Google checkout before, all they have to do is to enter their email address and password (just like Paypal). There are no lengthy forms to fill up. If he or she is a first time user, a new account will be created.

Conversion rates tend to be higher when you offer Google Checkout as a payment option because of the trust factor. Some customers may be afraid to make a purchase because they are unwilling to share credit card information with merchants. With Google checkout, they won’t have to share private information.

2Checkout.

2CO has been around for many years now. This is a payment processor that allows you to accept payments by credit or debit cards. Unlike Paypal and Google Checkout, customers will have to fill in their credit card info when making a purchase. The payments will be sent to 2CO, who will then verify the payments. The revenues will then be sent to the merchants via direct bank transfer or check.

Worldpay.

This is a very popular payment processing solution that is used by many large corporations. You must have your own merchant account if you want to use Worldpay. The setup allows revenues to be sent directly into your bank account.

Choosing OS Commerce vs. Zen Cart Shopping Solution for Web Development

Today, diverse shopping carts are being used by e-retail outlets to enhance their e-commerce and Web Development activities and offer a unique experience to its customers. There is an exhaustive list of Shopping Carts that include Magento, PrestaShop, CubeCart, OpenCart and StoreSprite. Two of the major open-source Shopping Carts that have attained high popularity in the recent years are OS Commerce and Zen Cart. Many Web Development service providers offer these two Shopping Cart Solutions at a very large scale. However, it is proven that Web Developers do not embrace a single Shopping Cart solution completely, because of the fear of obsolescence or lock-in.

The comparison among OS Commerce and Zen Cart Shopping Cart has taken place by Webmasters at many levels, and this article, by no means, intends to be an extension of the same. This article instead discusses the benefits of both OS Commerce and Zen Cart in a little detail and helps you choose a sound Shopping Cart for your Web Development projects.

Zen Cart Shopping Cart for Efficient Web Development

For efficient Web Development, developers bank on Zen Cart Shopping Cart. Zen is free, extremely user-friendly, an easy-to-install and open-source shopping cart. More than the developers, Zen Cart is a Shopping Cart solution for shoppers. Zen Cart also offers various exclusive features like multiple payment support, varied shipping options, quantity discounts and coupons.

Zen Cart also features multiple customer modes and sales and discounts, unlimited category depth and display modes. It also efficiently supports XHTML template system and offers the liberty to use unlimited extra pages and several ad banners. Many Web Development Companies in India, believe that no Shopping Cart solutions comes as close as Zen when it comes to features and benefits.

OS Commerce for a Strong and Dedicated Shopping Cart

OS Commerce is an open source online shopping cart that offers a wide range of features to online e-commerce stores. Like Zen Cart, OS Commerce also supports multiple currencies and allows the customers to print invoices directly from the order screen. Many Web Development companies vouch for its easy database backup system, and effective Web Development processes.

OS Commerce Shopping Cart features a rich set of functionality that allows e-commerce owners to setup and maintain online stores with minimum efforts and absolutely no costs. Many Web Development, India, firms have Java proficient web developers and are solely dedicated to designing projects in Java language.

Hope this article has been able to provide some help to all those who are yet to decide between Zen and OS Commerce Shopping for their Web Development projects.