Ever Done An SEO Check On Your Site?

Whether you’re a new online site owner or you’ve been in the ecommerce business for quite some time, it’s always wise to do an SEO checkup to make sure everything is in order. This helps you see the condition of your site so that you can make the necessary changes immediately if you spot anything amiss.

Here’s the basic rundown on how you can DIY (Do-It-Yourself).

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InstanteStore Introduces New Content Slider

Here comes our brand new spanking content slider! The previous one was getting ancient so the team decided to create a better one for our merchants to use. With the new slider, all you need to do is to upload your own images and type in whatever text you want displayed on it. We’ve included a text editor so you could pick the font and color of your choice.

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Design Tips From The Top Online Shopping Sites

What do some of the top online shopping sites have in common that draw tonnes of shoppers to buy from them? Nice pictures. Lots of nice, clear and colorful images. Less text. The design of their sites were made in such a way to put all the focus on the products. Whatever that is on the main page of their sites were placed there to capture the attention of shoppers the moment they land on the site. I’m not saying that everyone’s web store should all start looking like these top shopping sites as it would very well depend on what your own online store is selling but there are clear pointers that we could all learn and pick from these top sites.

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How Can You Improve User Experience On Your Site?

User Experience Honeycomb Design by Peter Morville.
User Experience Honeycomb Design by Peter Morville.

User experience can make or break a site. The user experience honeycomb design above puts things very simply if you’d like to take a closer look at the user experience expect of your site. If your site checks all the boxes, it’s good to go. But more often than not, it won’t.

For many of us, we only look at 2 of the elements listed above – findable and usable –  and disregard the rest. As long as our site can be easily found on search engine results pages and the features on it work as they should, we think our work is just about done. But that’s not the case now, is it?

Google has been increasingly harping on user experience these past couple of years. Everything is important, from the point a user clicks your online store’s link on SERPs to the time the same user exits your store.

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Shopping Search Engines To Compare And Place Your Products

Getting your products more exposure will help spread the word about your online store. Normally, merchants will have their products added to the popular shopping search engines like Google Shopping and Amazon. However, there are a few other top comparison search engines that one could consider.

Most of these sites have major categories like Electronics, Computers, Clothing, Accessories, Appliances, Sports, Jewelry, Furniture, Health and Beauty, Home and Garden, Children, Games, etc.

Depending on the type of products that you are selling, you could check out the categories listed on these sites to see whether they are offering similar products as your store along with the pricing to compare.  If you’ve got a better price to offer, then by all means go for it.

If you’re on a tight budget, stick to the free ones. Otherwise, you could check out some of these popular shopping search sites that consumers normally go to when they want to look for specific products. I’ve listed the tops ones here. Most of them will charge a cost-per-click (CPC) rate.

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Add Value To Your Customers’ Online Shopping Experience

Selling at times is quite an art. You need a combination of getting the ‘desire effect’ right. Look at how Apple did it. Their products are more expensive but whenever there’s any product launch (or even a hint of it), everyone goes a bit nuts. Then comes the sales.

But let’s get down to reality here. Not all businesses are like Apple. Normal folks who are just setting up a small online store to sell products need to offer something more to their customers.

Other than the usual buy 2 and get 1 free or free shipping thrown in, one of the best ways would be to add some value to your customers. Depending on what type of product that you are selling, your online store should not only be about your products. It should have a mixture of tips, advice and relevant information to help your customers. Or it could even be a good place for people to visit to get relevant, useful and informative tips and advice. This will help your store’s SEO if you get a lot of natural traffic coming in.

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Is Your Business Targeting Emerging Markets Or Over-Saturated Ones?

Spotted Eagle Ray formation, Keauhou Bay, Big Island, Hawaii.Happy New Year everyone! Hope you’re all doing great. We’re still hearing constant news of economic slowdown and the never-ending budget woes coupled with stock markets bouncing around. But one thing has certainly remained constant. Consumers are spending more and more on online shopping year on year. Last year had some pretty impressive figures to show when it came to all the Black Friday, Thanksgiving, Cyber Monday and holiday shopping season.

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InstanteStore Partners With Payza, Award Winning International Online Payment Platform

Payza Logo

InstanteStore continues to grow its partner list of payment processors by integrating with Payza, an award winning international online payment platform. Payza has over 9 million members and services 197 countries in 21 different currencies. The company recently acquired AlertPay which was another payment provider that InstanteStore had integrated into their ecommerce solution.

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Build Your Own Online Store With Proper Planning

Too Beautiful to Eat?Building your own online store may be easy for some people but for the majority who are not so techno-savy, they will need all the help they can get. Before you jump on the bandwagon to start your own online business, here are a few things that you will need to consider.

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