The number of people buying products online is on a rise. And an e-commerce web site is an ideal platform to showcase and sell multitude of products to your target audience. But to ensure that your products reach to the maximum number of target audience, you need to make it seo-friendly so that it ranks high in the searches on Google and other search engines.

Here are some tips to make your e-commerce site seo friendly:

Use proper keywords

If you want to rank higher in the top search engines, you need to incorporate the best performing keywords in the site. Search popular keywords from the various keyword tools such as Google Adwords Keywords Tool External, Wordtracker or Keyword Discovery. The right keywords will help the site in reaching the top in major search engines.

List products in order of importance

You have only 30 seconds to grab the attention of your visitor to make him stay longer on the site for more. Therefore it makes sense that you sort out the products on the basis of importance and list the best and most tempting offers, on the first page itself.

Classification of products

Classifying products into categories and sub categories makes it easier for user to locate the products he/she is searching for. For example you have an e-commerce site which sells furniture online. You can classify the items into main categories such as beds, tables, sofas, chairs etc. and further break down categories into sub-categories. For example beds can have sub-categories such as junk beds, king size beds, queen size beds. You can also make categories by price, size, brand or any other product attribute.

Compelling product descriptions

It is a Web 2.0 world and undoubtedly content is king. A well-written and powerful product description not only persuades visitors to buy products but also boost rankings. Hence pay attention to the content part and create persuasive descriptions of products which urge visitors to take the final action.

Unique and keyword rich title tags

It is important to incorporate primary keywords in the title tag. Having well written and keyword rich title tags guarantee top rankings in the Google. And it is sensible to use different title tags for different pages. Don’t try to save time by writing just one title tag for all pages. This would cost you a lot in the long run. Google and other search engines display results which contain the keyword typed in by the user. And if you use only one title tag for all pages, you won’t be able to target other several keywords for different pages and ultimately you would be losing potential customers. Therefore each page must have clear, concise and unique title tag which should reflect the information pertaining to that particular page. For example if you are on the category page, then the title tag must contain the category name and if you are on a sub category page, the title tag must include the sub category name.

Use alt text for images

The images of product should be clear and attractive enough to tempt users to buy. And make sure that all your product images contain the alt text with the product name and link to the product detail page. After all search engines can’t crawl images but they can read the alt text.

Breadcrumb trail

Breadcrumb trail is the text that appears either on top of the page or at the bottom and shows you the path you took to reach the current page. Suppose you reached the dining table page on the e-commerce site selling furniture, then breadcrumb trail would show ‘home> furniture> dining table’. Having the breadcrumb trail not only enhances the usability of a particular page, but also makes it easier for search engines to index it.

Smooth navigation

The way products are organized in the site with categories and sub-categories makes a lot of difference. When a user comes to your site he/she must find it easy to locate the products. Having left side navigation bar throughout your site boosts the usability factor. It helps the visitors to know where they are in the site and how to navigate through it easily. A consistent navigation is also easier for search engines to crawl.

Avoid Flash

Never ever even think of having Flash intros for your e-commerce site. Flash takes time to load and is not very SEO-friendly. Though Google spider can crawl Flash now, it is still better to steer clear of using Flash. Customers don’t have time to wait for long to see and buy your products.

Simple checkout process

Complicated navigation can result in a loss of a potential customer. Make the checkout process as simple and easy as you can for the customer to complete a sale and pay you money. Display pricing and shipping information clearly and also include details about return policies in case of dissatisfaction, terms of use, privacy, access to customer service and the phone number. Nothing convinces the customer about your credibility more than knowing that you are just a phone call away.

Product & Category URLs

It is beneficial if the URLs contain keywords and not just the domain name. It is because Google and other search engines highlight the URL in bold if it contains the keyword, the user has searched for. This is the added advantage of attracting the visitors.

To create an e-commerce site which is SEO friendly is not easy. It requires skilled and talented designers, content developers and web marketers to develop an e-commerce site which attracts visitors and search engines alike.

Neha Arora is an experienced web content writer working for Wisitech Info Solutions, a leading name in end-to-end web solutions outsourcing web development companies based in New Delhi, India. Neha has written incisive and thought-provoking articles on web design and website development and how such work is being outsourced to Indian outsourcing firms web designs companies.

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Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) are used to give a stylistic look and formatting of the page elements like layout color, fonts, alignments, images etc. to a document that written in the markup language. You can easily control the properties of the elements by the CSS. CSS can be easily called from all the pages. Here are some benefits using the CSS.

CSS makes the Pages good looking

The design using HTML only doesn’t look well, but if the CSS is blended with the HTML at the time of website design, it gives the web pages decent look and makes the pages technically stronger.

The time to design the site is reduced

At the time of designing, the properties of the elements of the pages are controlled through the class written in the CSS. So the designer doesn’t have to define the properties again and again. It reduces the time of the designing.

The designing becomes easier

As the CSS can be controlled centrally from an external file, it becomes very easier for the designers to work. Just define the properties of the page elements in classes once and call the class in the pages several times.

Web page load time would be reduced

Cascading Style Sheet reduces the page load time. The CSS is downloaded once and stored locally, when the next pages are opening the CSS is not downloaded further thus the pages load faster.

CSS saves the server space and bandwidth

CSS is created in a separate page and it is called in the pages through link. Hence you can easily cut down the overall amount of codes in your web pages. The size of the webpage become smaller and your web server space could be saved. As it is downloaded once for the full session, it saves the bandwidth also.

CSS allows you to place the page elements anywhere

It becomes easier for the Web developers to position the page elements where ever they wish to give the page a good look. And CSS also helps to change the properties of the page elements. E.g. if a particular section of the pages need bigger text in any other color compared to existing, It can be done easily with the CSS. No need to change all the pages of the portal individually. Thus CSS reduces the risks colligated with the maintenance of the website.

CSS has the all browsers compatibility

CSS is compatible with all the browsers. All browsers support the CSS and its functionalities. Thus, the web designers and web developers don’t have to think about the page elements’ functionalities. The websites which are using the CSS appear similar in all the browsers. CSS functions same in all the browsers.

Users can easily customize the webpage

Currently many websites give the liberty to the users to change the web pages as per their choice without changing the contents. If users wish to change the fonts, color of the page, even layout also that can be done through the CSS. This makes better user interactivity in the websites.

CSS style sheets make your website more search engines friendly

Most of the images can be easily controlled through the CSS. Thus CSS makes the webpage light. It can control the page elements’ properties from outside. This makes the page well structured. Google rewards the websites that are well structured.

If you use the CSS wisely you will be benefited from all the aspects. You can save time, can save effort and also can save money. CSS makes the website lighter and also the user friendly. It gives the websites a greater and better look and feel to attract the visitors.

Abir Roychowdhury is a professional Internet marketer. For Website Design Web Design Company or for to hire Best Web Designer Web Developer visit Brandmantra.net.

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In the previous two articles, we covered the basics of image crawls, and how to avoid some of their weaknesses and design them without major glitches or problems.  For this final article, we’ll discuss a few extra options for these crawls.  As a reminder (or to bring you up to speed if you are not reading the series sequentially), an image crawl is a form of code that causes thumbnails to slowly move across the screen.  As we’ve discussed, image crawls are great for websites where you want people to get a good view of a wide variety of product images, such as with jewelry, photography, and graphic design.

One of the weaknesses we had discussed earlier was the speed at which the image crawl moves.  This makes them poor choices for general shopping navigation; they’re great for browsing your photographs, not so much for finding the perfect piece of jewelry to buy as an anniversary gift.  This can be exasperated if the crawl only moves in one direction at a fixed rate.  If something catches a user’s eye and they don’t click it in time, they would have to wait for the entire crawl to loop around before they see it again.  User-friendly that ain’t.

It can be a useful idea, thus, to allow users to control the crawl.  The first way to do this is a simple “onmouseover” function that causes the crawl to stop, generally by clearing the timer.  When the mouse moves off, another function restarts the timer, continuing the crawl.

In some cases, though, you might have other animations or functions that are going off that same timer (it’s easier on the computer to track everything on one timer rather than having to keep multiple timed functions going simultaneously).  In this case, you can use a Speed variable to determine how many pixels the crawl moves with each instance of its function being called.  On mouse over, the Speed is set to 0, causing it to stop.  It returns to 1 (or whatever) on mouse out.

Even if you stop and start the crawl with timeouts, though, a Speed variable can be useful.  People have different preferences, and having buttons or a control that lets them change the speed can easily make the site a bit more dynamic and convenient.  It’s also not hard to set the crawl up to go forward or backward, so if someone sees a photo or piece of jewelry they like and just miss hitting it, they can just reverse the crawl’s direction.  In fact, the code snippet from the previous article is designed for calculating the loop in both directions.

A speed and direction control is the last piece of a good image crawl.  All told, it’s a fairly simple piece of functionality, easily doable with less than a hundred lines of code, and probably less than fifty.  It adds a nice touch to photography, graphic design, jewelry, and other sites where visual appeal and an aethetic product presentation are critical.

Dustin Schwerman is the head web designer for Truly Unique Website Design. Truly Unique works on websites of all varieties; their clients may offer products and services ranging from religious jewelry to glamour photography.

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In my previous article, I discussed the basics of image crawls – selections of thumbnails that move across the site to display photos, graphics, jewelry, or whatever other products or items you want to show.  I talked about their uses, how they are ideal for giving people a look at images and products for sites where visual appear is important, such as photography and jewelry sites, and their main weaknesses.  In this article, I’ll be going into more of the details regarding some potential pitfalls or challenges when coding image crawls, and how to get around them.  This is not meant as a strict tutorial on creating the code, but rather, some advice for how to properly implement it and avoid problems.

First, you might run into your crawl being choppy.  In most cases, this is because you’re moving it too far and not often enough.  Something moving 100 pixels every second is looking to look like an image jumping across the screen; a crawl is more likely to move 1 pixel every hundredth of a second.

Now, if you have a database full of jewelry pieces or photographs, of which several come up in your image crawl, the last thing you want to do is try to move each one individually with a loop.  This process is incredibly taxing on computer resources, and as such, incredibly slow.  If our crawl is moving 1 pixel every ten miliseconds, that means that a hundred times a second, the computer has to run through the piece of Javascript code that moves the image.  If that code includes a loop to move 10, 20, 50, 100 images one pixel to the left, it becomes incredibly taxing.  Add in the extraneous checks required to make sure each image hasn’t reached the point where it is supposed to loop around, and you have a massive strain.  As a result, the crawl will move significantly slower, may have a slightly jittery look, and is more subject to glitches, especially after several revolutions.

The solution?  Put all your photos, jewelry pieces, whatever, into a single div or table, and just move <i>it</i>.  Simple enough, but it brings us to two new challenges.  First: you’re dynamically loading thumbnails from a database.  They may have varying widths (or heights, for vertical crawls), and you may not know how many are going to be on the page.  So, the challenge becomes figuring out how to decide when to wrap the image crawl.  The next problem is, you can’t wrap it cleanly; either it winds up skipping, or you get a long blank spot waiting for the div to trail off before it loops back to the start.

I find the simplest solution to the second is to create two trains, one after the other.  You can have two duplicate trains if you’d like, or to save on loading time, simply load half your images into one train, and half into the next.  As far as calculating <i>where</i> to loop, I suggest cutting out the middlemen and making calculations based on the height and width of the divs.  If you haven’t had opportunity to figure out how to dynamically calculate that yet, use document.getElementById(“DivName”).offsetHeight or document.getElementById(“DivName”).offsetWidth.  Note that floating and absolutely positioned elements <i>will not count</i> towards offsetHeight and offsetWidth, so make sure your thumbnails are relatively positioned (tables work well enough for this purpose).  The general calculation is, when the div’s “left” value is greater than the length of the containing div (when moving right) or less than 0 – the length of the div itself (when moving left), change it to the other.  Similar rules apply for vertical crawls.  So for example:

if (CrawlLeft <= (0-CrawlWidth) && Moving == “Left”)
{
CrawlLeft = CrawlWidth
}
else if (CrawlLeft >= CrawlWidth && Moving == “Right”)
{
CrawlLeft = (0-CrawlWidth)
}

As a side note, you want to make sure your crawl is in an “overflow:hidden” container div.  Otherwise, especially for a crawl moving right or down, as the crawl moves, a scrollbar will appear and start getting longer.  Very disruptive.

So, that should be enough to get a basic crawl going without any major glitches.  In the final article in this trilogy, I’ll get into some extras you can place in the crawl, such as speed and direction modification.

Dustin Schwerman is the head web designer for Truly Unique Website Design. Truly Unique works on websites of all varieties; their clients may offer products and services ranging from religious jewelry to glamour photography.

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An image crawl is a nice way to display a selection of thumbnail images without resorting to a big table that takes up most of the page.  Ideal for sites that have a lot of images, such as those offering photography or graphic design services, or for those where the appearance of the product is a major selling point, as with jewelry sites, these crawls are a simple way to add some animation and interactivity.

An image crawl basically works as follows: you have a selection of thumbnails (photographs you’ve shot, pieces of jewelry you’re selling, etc) that go across the screen either vertically or horizontally.  Those images move slowly across the screen, allowing a viewer to browse the images.  Typically, the crawl will be set up with links, so that when the viewer clicks an image, it will go to a larger view of the photograph, the jewelry piece’s purchase page, or the like.

These functions have their weaknesses, as well as options that can minimize and mitigate them.  Generally, image crawls are made to move fairly slowly, making them poor choices for getting people to the product they need.  Image crawls should not generally be used as a main store display.  Rather, they are a supplemental display intended to give a look at the products offered or the website owner’s photography, graphics, and other work, as well as the ability to go to the actual jewelry piece, photo, design, or other item that catches a user’s eye.  Since image crawls take up much less space than a typical catalog section, they are great for placing on every page of a site, keeping the products at the forefront of the visitor’s attention.

Image crawls are also often made up of several images.  This can result in a high loading time, even with tiny thumbnails.  Using pre-sized thumbnail images is a must; not only will quality suffer drastically if you simply set the width and height properties of a full-size image to thumbnail size, but this will not actually reduce the size of the image being downloaded.  Even then, you want to keep the number of images to a manageable size.  You don’t want the entirety of a large jewelry database to be appearing, for example.  Good solutions are to choose specific featured images, or, if you want every image to potentially display, use a random selection from a database with a limit.  This can be particularly effective if the images show up on different pages, giving a visitor a new selection each time they change the page.  Other options include displaying only from a page-appropriate (or random) category.  One final note regarding the difficulties of image number: if you have a lot of images in your crawl, and especially if your crawl appears on every page of the site, your “hits” will skyrocket.  Moreso than ever, visitors should be your primary stat to look at if you want accurate statistics (or, as accurate as they get on the web).

Although those are the most notable weaknesses of image crawls, there are also some potential pitfalls that one should be aware of when creating them, and methods of coding that will minimize the impact of such problems.  I discuss these in the next article on the details of image crawls.

Dustin Schwerman is the head web designer for Truly Unique Website Design. Truly Unique works on websites of all varieties; their clients may offer products and services ranging from religious jewelry to glamour photography.

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