DM News published an article titled ‘Copywriting for better online retail SEO‘ by Elastic Path’s VP Marketing (and search enthusiast) Jason Billingsley in their March 30 2007 online edition.

Anyone who has chatted with Jason at a trade show or other event quickly learns that he is passionate about search engine optimization and enhancing usability to increase conversions. Show him your site and, after a quick and calculated look, he’ll rattle off a dozen tips and tricks which will increase your site visibility resulting in more (cheap) organic hits allowing you to reduce spend on (often expensive) Pay Per Click ads while maintaining or increasing your traffic levels.

No, Google is not too worried ;-), but your competition will be worried if you study Jason’s tips and follow them.

Anyhow, the article hands out a big concept which is basically a new way of looking at something you are already doing for your site - writing words. The gist of Jason persuasive case is ‘write how your customers search.’

People search similarly to how they speak. The content created should match closely to the content sought and, therefore, will rank toward the top of the search engine results page.

I find watching people use search engines remarkable due to the words they use to search - more often than not, casual phrases and conversational snippets are the norm rather than one-off, specific word strings like found in a products’ technical specifications.

Jason sets up an example of this:

For example, a typical description of a sheet set may read as follows: ‘100 percent cotton, 300-thread count, cross-woven machine washable.’ However, the product will be much more findable, and will rank higher in organic searches, if the name and description contained the same language searchers are using.

The shopper would respond much better to this: ‘These winter white soft bedsheets will whisk you off to a comfortable dreamland every night. No other luxury bedding will make your bedroom as regal as the Queen Collection’s 300-thread count, 100 percent cotton sheet set. The only trouble with a luxurious, warm and comfortable set of sheets like this is having to get out of your dream bed each morning.’

As you see, these words are more persuasive and contain sets of phrases shoppers are actually looking for: white soft bedsheets, luxury bedding, cotton sheet set, comfortable set of sheets, dream bed.

So when writing your descriptions, commit the time and energy to doing it right. Think ti through and write a little story for each product. This seems like a lot of work and it is. Writing isn’t necessarily easy and writing well takes practice and well, … time.

As such, seek advice from experienced writers (freelance if needed) and absolutely talk to people outside of your vertical universe. Talk to your nieces, grandmothers and neighbors to find out how they talk about your type of goods (ergo: a ‘couch’ to one person is a ’sofa’ to another and a ‘chesterfield’ to someone else). Make sure to get out of your company echo chamber where everyone uses and understands the same industry jargon and parlance. By doing so, you’ll find fresh insight into the ways customers search for what you have. By doing so, you’ll attract more qualified buyers, more cheaply.

Make more + Spend less = Great Success! Start by reading Jason’s tips.

DM News published an article about the crew over at Power Reviews concerning the announcement of a multi-language platform being used by none other than our Vancouver neighbours Mountain Equipment Co-Op whose flagship store is just around the corner.

Anyhow, in the March 8, 2007 article “Voila! PowerReviews lets users review in French, Spanish, Italian and German” by Dianna Dilworth, we are grouped in with PR other partners who are a heavy hitting list of ecommerce vendors.

As regular readers likely know, Elastic Path customers are spread around the globe and many more sell goods internationally - as such, we enthusiastically support cool tools which combine global mindedness and the openness user customer generated content.

Already ready to go along with the French and English used by MEC are Italian and German (apologies to our Icelandic friends) with Chinese, Japanese and Korean coming later this year.

Article snippet after the break to get you started:

Continue Reading:
Multi-language Customer Reviews in DM News »

Another article appeared in Internet Retailer featuring some of Elastic Path wisdom. Written by Bill Siwicki, this article is called, “Designs on Success” with a provocative subtitle of “Web site design lives in Internet years, and retailers who don’t get regular makeovers risk being left behind.”

The article goes into great detail about the gulf which often exists between the design sensibilities of marketing and branding types and the technical constraints of the IT crew. Of course both sides’ whims are tempered by the endless promotions and calls to actions ostensibly needed to feed the sales machine.

Continue Reading:
Internet Retailer - Designs on Success article »

DMNews checked in from Etail West in Palm Desert, CA with an article titled, “Multichannel marketing inches ahead at eTail,” posted by Chantal Todé & Dianna Dilworth February 22nd, 2007.

They review some of the big, multi-channel vendors in attendance and discuss what they seek at the show and hint that the technologies are in transition and some major players are re-thinking strategy before diving in. In other words, raising conversion rates by tweaking channels is the name of the game rather than “build a whole new thing tomorrow.”

EP’s Jason checks in saying …

Jason Billingsley, vice president of marketing at Elastic Path, Vancouver, B.C., said he didn’t hear much talk about innovation at eTail. “Large retailers are not going out on a limb and trying new stuff,” Mr. Billingsley said.

Instead, retailers were more concerned with how they are going to fund the next big multichannel initiative.

Continue Reading:
DMNews on Multichannel marketing inching ahead at eTail »

A February 5th article by Jack M. Germain LinuxInsider (Part of the ECT News Network) breaks down some history of Open Source software and the recent history of the ecommerce industry since the chaotic days of April 2000.

Just like the Gold Rush of the Old West in the 1800s, the dot-com business surge had its fling and then fell off. Just like the rise of the Old West to a thriving community of states, the Internet is now a thriving home to a new world of commerce online. One of the driving forces for the resurgence of e-commerce is the increasing use of open source.

Continue Reading:
Tech News World asks: Is E-Commerce Ready for Open Source? »

In Feb. 20th edition of Internet Retailer, Elastic Path’s VP Marketing was quoted in an article called, “Keeping site design to a minimum” which discussed the very relevant idea of keeping your ecommerce site design clean and simple rather than barraging visitors with a confusing clutter of linkable chaos.

Here’s what he had to say:

Generally, many e-retailers can’t seem to see the forest for the trees, contends Jason Billingsley, vice president of marketing at Elastic Path Software Inc., an e-commerce platform vendor.

“A forgotten aspect of site design is minimalism—reducing features, reducing functionality,” Billingsley says. “When you look at successful e-commerce designs like Apple’s, you see it’s difficult to get confused. It’s minimalist. And if you can get across one clear message, it’s far more effective than crowding shoppers with more features and functions.”

The article also quotes Craig Smith, founder and managing director of Trinity Insight LLC, and Troy Lawson, chief technology officer at Best Kiteboarding LLC who echo Jason’s opinion saying on minimalism, saying, “You don’t want to cause analysis paralysis, where you give shoppers so many options” and, “… take something so complicated but present it in a way that is so easy to use,” respectively.

Linux Insider magazine, Part of the ECT News Network published an article “Is E-Commerce Ready for Open Source?” By Jack M. Germain on Feb. 5, 2007

Read the Elastic Path-specific bits below or the whole thing at Tech World News and, heck might as well Digg it!

Still Under Construction

While open source applications are clearly making an impact in the e-commerce space, it is not yet fully integrated, leaving vendors to use proprietary products for some aspects of their business control. For example, Williams explained that open source commerce is rarely used on the high end. It is mostly used as an entry platform.

The choices a vendor makes are determined to a great extent on their companies’ business preferences, Jason Billingsley, vice president of marketing at Elastic Path Software, told LinuxInsider. His company develops Java e-commerce software platform for building online stores and shopping carts.

Continue Reading:
Linux Insider asks Is E-Commerce Ready for Open Source? »

Internet Retailer wrote a nice overview of benefits and usages of AJAX technique specifically in the ecommerce realm. Read the Elastic Path relevant passages below or the whole deal at Internet Retailer featuring notes and comments about Coastal Contacts - a multi-store ecommerce merchant selling contact lenses worldwide.

Cleaning up the store with Ajax
The rich Internet application is spiffing up retail web sites and enhancing the shopper experience

By Paul Demery, February 1, 2007
Coastal Contacts Inc., which does about $80 million a year selling contact lenses throughout the world on 20 web sites, invested in a state-of-the-art online shopping feature two years ago - single-page checkout. Built with ColdFusion, a software development tool used for building dynamic web pages, the new streamlined shopping service helped to decrease shopping cart abandonment and boost sales. “We know the one-page checkout definitely cuts abandonment and improves visitor-to-sales conversion rates,” says Nancy Morison, vice president of product management.

But the slick new checkout wasn’t slick enough, Coastal Contacts soon learned. If a customer purchasing a set of clear lenses decided during checkout that she also wanted those green-tinted lenses after all, she’d have to leave the checkout page, backtrack to a merchandising page, and maybe - or maybe not - make it back to the checkout to complete the purchase. “They might just say, ‘Where did the checkout page go?’ and forget it, figuring they’ll just come back another day,” Morison says.

As everyone in online retailing knows, however, deciding to come back another day may result in a sale lost to a store or online competitor. So to kick its single-page checkout up to a new level of performance, Coastal Contacts re-launched it last month after rebuilding it on an e-commerce platform designed with Ajax- one of the hottest new tools for providing an easier and faster shopping experience on retail web sites. Continue Reading:
Internet Retailer - Cleaning up the store with Ajax »

Internet Retailer magazine picked up the recent press release about Breville, a specialty appliance multi-channel retailer and an Elastic Path customer. The gist of the piece is that Breville chose EP instead of hosted ecommerce solutions for reasons including: the speed to deployment, the ability to quickly execute marketing campaigns, the shopping personalization tools and the baked-in search engine optimization features.

Continue Reading:
Internet Retailer Magazine Juiced on Breville’s Ecommerce Success »

One of the knocks on ecommerce is the missing sales consultant. I am not talking about the indifferent clerk who seems to have no idea where anything is located let alone have an opinion or inclination to help you choose something significant - rather I am talking of the rare sales associate who has the knack to help find exactly what to get for a “hard to buy for” friend or relative.

Well, during the recent holiday shopping frenzy, our quotable friends at Electric Shopping (read more Electric Shopping on Get Elastic) used a solution is innovative, enjoyable and successful at increasing conversions for the various home, kitchen, and body products they sell from their pureplay ecommerce shop along with some intriguing trips and activities.

While there is no shortage of neat devices to browse through for your own benefit, choosing for your Aunt Mildred (I really have an Aunt Mildred by the way) is a different scenario than buying for yourself. This is where Electric Shopping’s gift finder comes in by helping you pick something with a wow factor that the person will actually enjoy rather another ho-hum product destined for strategic “re-gifting.”

The ES folks help shoppers with these perilous decisions by attaching emotive characteristics to the products and grouping product attributes by lifestyle and interests as well as more mundane variables like gender and budget.

For example … as a coffee enthusiast, I have more in common with other java aficionados regardless of age, than in with other 3o-something males who don’t have an interest in the magical bean beverage.

Anyhow, since Internet Retailer magazine wrote about it on December 15th, I’ll just hand the ball to them to run with and tell you more about Electric Shopping’s solution.

Electric drilling helps designer junkies and others find holiday gifts

To aid shoppers in their quest for just the right gift, and do so in a way that cannot be replicated in stores, U.K.-based Electricshopping.com Ltd. has added a gift finder this holiday season that enables shoppers to drill down until they find a web page with just the right assortment of merchandise.

The e-retailer has placed the gift finder where no one can miss it: in a large, screen-wide, red-and-white banner at the top of the e-commerce site’s home page. A single drop-down menu in the banner asks shoppers the first of many questions: For him or for her? The ensuing pages, adorned with holiday graphics, enable shoppers to further drill down by other variables, including type of gift, cost and recipient personality type. The numerous personalities include caffeine addict, fitness freak, gadget lover, ghost buster and designer junkie.

“To ensure we remain competitive in the crowded e-retailing market, we found it essential to provide customers a gift finder that makes searching and connecting with the perfect gift simple,” says Rob Levy, managing director at Electricshopping.com, which built the gift finder using tools in its e-commerce platform from Elastic Path Software. “Adding the gift finder feature to our site was effortless, and we are seeing a notable increase in sales.” (note: emphasis mine)

As always, you can check the article Electric drilling helps designer junkies and others find holiday gifts in its native habitat at Internet Retailer and also visit Electric Shopping for yourself (though the gift finder banner is currently replaced with a New Years Sale promotion). I’ll make a note to check in with them to see how the Gift Finder fared over the holiday as well.