Metanym

Mother is here!

jon — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 14:58:57 +0000

It lives! It breathes! Mother is alive! (Mwu-ha-ha….) After months in development, Mother is now available for use….

Well the time is here – you can try Mother (see Mother’s marketing website for more info) out for yourself by signing up to a free account with no obligation here.

If you run a service-related business of any sort, Mother will help you organise all your customer-facing activity. So that’s lead tracking, through to quoting, through to online acceptance of quote (you hope!), through to invoicing and project management. Plus it’s all linked up in a way that makes it really easy to jump from one part to another – no more climbing back up out of a drill-down structure to drill down into a another part!

And if you’re involved in the web design industry, Mother has even more special features just for you – a handy structure to keep track of which domain is owned by which customer, plus all those horrible little bits of information you have to hunt around in emails, databases and bits of paper for, like FTP details, or control panel logins if it’s on someone else’s hosting, client’s Google account login etc. And as a bonus, if you sign up to the basic plan or above, you get unlimited free hosting for any number of domains.

We think you’ll really like Mother, but there’s only one way to find out – try it out for yourself and see what you think. And please send us any feedback – good or bad – we really want to know what you think. We’ve got our own long list of enhancements we want to make over the coming weeks and months, but we’d like to know what you think should be the priority.

love Mother X

Mother is coming…!

jon — Thu, 13 May 2010 19:47:04 +0000

For the past 3 months, as well as working on customers’ websites, we’ve been busy beavering away on a new web-based service to be launched soon: Mother!
Mother is a web based application, primarily aimed at web professionals, but with much wider appeal for a variety of service based businesses, which provides easy to use project management, customer relationship management, sales and opportunity tracking, and online estimating and invoicing. Born out of a frustration that as a small web design agency, we couldn’t find a single web-based service to provide all of this, with the resulting duplication of time and effort (and money!), Mother has been in our heads for many months if not years.

For the last 3 months, we’ve been building the answer! And Mother is nearly with us!

You can read more at Mother’s website at www.managewithmother.com and sign up for news on the upcoming launch. We should be ready in another couple of weeks – Mike the developer and Tom the designer are busy putting finishing touches to Mother and we hope you’ll want to sign up for the FREE trial account when that is released soon.

love Mother X

click for more info

What Video can do for your Website

jon — Thu, 13 May 2010 06:28:05 +0000

Putting video on your website is a perfect way of engaging with your audience – watch this video to find out more……

This video will start automatically when it has loaded
Click the video to pause

Putting video on your website is a perfect way of engaging with your audience.

you can attract a wider audience
improve the experience of your website visitor
you are able show people your knowledge and bring some personality to your site
it’s being used more and more but it’s still DIFFERENT
it’s very easy to do
it has little understood search engine optimisation benefits (Google’s best kept secret!)
video is viral – people will pass it on to their contacts
it improves “stickiness” holding people on your website longer
video is versatile, and can be “repurposed” as well as repurposing other content in your video

Many thanks to Phil Hedley at Big Fat Pigeon Productions for shooting the video.

Coming soon…..Top Tips for getting video on your website

Why your business should be blogging

jon — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 13:51:21 +0000

Most people these days know that a blog (short for “weblog”) is a great way to let people know what you are doing – but few business owners realise the massive commercial benefits of running a blog.

1. Search Engine Optimisation (”SEO”)
Search engines like Google, Yahoo etc, love freshly updated, keyword-rich content. Blogs by their very nature are updated more frequently than normal corporate websites, and so they are more likely to be given a higher ranking by the search engines.

Peppering you blog entries with keywords relevant to your target audience and links back to your main website, is virtually guaranteed to improve your search engine positioning. The results can be dramatic!

Your blog can be a part of your current website – it doesn’t have to be completely separate – in fact now search engines will give greater influence to a blog that IS a part of your website than not, as in their eyes this means it is more likely to be of genuine use to your target audience.

2. Customer Communications

Websites are a broadcast medium, in that you put your content there and people read it. Blogs are totally different, in that they are a communication medium. You put your content on your blog and people can comment about what you have written and have a discussion with you.

This 2-way form of commercial communication has massive potential for your business. For example, your blog can keep your existing customers up to date on your new products, services and offers and introduce your products, services and offers to new, potential customers!

3. Build your reputation as an expert

A blog is a perfect way to showcase your expertise. Building your reputation as a source of free, credible advice on your subject, is a phenomenal way to attract the attention of potential customers.

Once you position yourself in the marketplace as an expert in your field, you will attract more enquiries, leads and subsequently, more business too! One of our blogging clients generates sales a number of sales leads every day, 7 days a week, from his blog; without spending a penny advertising or promoting it.

4. Differentiate yourself

Rise above your competitors by offering more – advice, useful information etc

5. PR

Blogs are a great way to maintain a news section of your website – and with links that you can send out to the media and other marketing channels.

6. Low cost content management

A blog is inexpensive to set up, and can be used to power a whole website rather than just a blog/news tool. Increasingly, businesses are turning to blog-powered websites in order to increase the marketing effectiveness of their online presence.

Case studies

To see a typical blog in action…..well you’re looking at one right now!

For a great example of how a blog has been used to set up a News section on a website, head over to the News section of the Uncle Henry’s Farm Shop website at http://www.unclehenrys.co.uk/blog/

To see websites powered by our blog system, that look nothing like blogs, see our clients and friends Business Pathfinders at http://www.businesspathfinders.co.uk/and Golden Promise Turkeys at http://www.golden-promise.co.uk.

If you are already running a Wordpress blog, check out our guide to some essential add-ons (http://www.metanym.com/blog/2009/11/10-dynamite-wordpress-plugins/).

Happy blogging!

Jon

PHP developer required for 3 month project

jon — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 14:45:06 +0000

Metanym needs a skilled PHP developer for an exciting project starting soon.

We’re looking for someone with excellent PHP5 skills, encompassing frameworks and templating, APIs and MySQL databases. Strong knowledge of Ajax, and its use in state-of-the-art user interfaces, is also required.

The project’s initially envisaged timescale is 3 months full-time, although there may be a need for a much longer, possibly permanent involvement.

The position will be based at our offices in the Webmill (Gringley-on-the-Hill, near Gainsborough and Doncaster), although once underway, a significant proportion of remote working will be allowed if required, but you will need to be (reasonably) local. This is a freelance (sub-contractor) position, at least initially, but if it turns into something more permanent, we can review that.

If you are interested, please let us have your CV, portfolio, etc, and let us know when you could start and what sort of rate you are looking for.

New Membership Rewards Sites for Direct Line Insurance and England Squash & Racketball

jon — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 12:23:47 +0000

Metanym are proud to announce the completion of new membership rewards websites for Direct Line Insurance and England Squash & Racketball.

The websites were designed and developed by us in partnership with Counterpoint Promotions Ltd, using a bespoke system we developed for them, which allows the online provision of various promotions and incentives, including single use online discount vouchers, aimed at membership organisations and companies with large customer bases.

The websites are private to the customers/members of those organisations, so unfortunately we can’t show them to you, but if this type of development is of interest to you, please contact us and we will be able to arrange a private viewing of the websites and their functionality. Similarly if you are interested in a rewards programme for your members, please contact Counterpoint at www.cpromo.co.uk.

Using NEXTGen Gallery Tagcloud as Navigation

jon — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 09:26:36 +0000

There is ONE BIG DRAWBACK with the NEXTGen Gallery Plugin’s tagcloud – once you have clicked a tag, and are presented with the images related to that tag, the tagcloud has gone from the results page. Here is a solution if you want to use the tagcloud as an ever-present navigation option in your gallery section….

The Problem

We recently reconfigured our entire website to use Wordpress. As a blog/content management system, it is easily configurable and flexible to use. As web designers & developers, we constantly suffer from “the cobbler’s children are poorest shod” syndrome, i.e. after looking after our clients’ websites, there is no time left to look after our own, so having a flexible system like Wordpress should allow us to keep things more up to date.

We decided to use the NEXTGen Gallery plugin to power our Portfolio section, because it is so easy to upload images singly or in bulk, and has so many categorisation options, we felt it would give us the flexibility we needed going forward.

We especially like the provision of Tags (keywords), used throughout Wordpress for pages and posts, associated with images. The plugin comes with shortcode tagcloud which you just drop in to a page, surrounded by [ ], to produce this:

The Solution

The solution is to modify the NEXTGen code as follows:

1. Edit nggfunctions.php (either through the Plugins Editor in the Wordpress Admin, or edit the file directly – it is in the top level of the /nextgen-gallery/ directory in you source files – found in wp-content/plugins/ if you have uploaded or installed directly via Wordpress).

2. Find this code starting on lines 1010 – 1045 (the last lines of the file before the ?> closing php tag) :

function nggTagCloud($args =”, $template = ”) {
global $nggRewrite;

// $_GET from wp_query
$tag = get_query_var(’gallerytag’);
$pageid = get_query_var(’pageid’);

// look for gallerytag variable
if ( $pageid == get_the_ID() || !is_home() ) {
if (!empty( $tag )) {

$slug = esc_attr( $tag );
$out = nggShowGalleryTags( $slug );
return $out;
}
}

$defaults = array(
’smallest’ => 8, ‘largest’ => 22, ‘unit’ => ‘pt’, ‘number’ => 45,
‘format’ => ‘flat’, ‘orderby’ => ‘name’, ‘order’ => ‘ASC’,
‘exclude’ => ”, ‘include’ => ”, ‘link’ => ‘view’, ‘taxonomy’ => ‘ngg_tag’
);
$args = wp_parse_args( $args, $defaults );

$tags = get_terms( $args['taxonomy'], array_merge( $args, array( ‘orderby’ => ‘count’, ‘order’ => ‘DESC’ ) ) ); // Always query top tags

foreach ($tags as $key => $tag ) {

$tags[ $key ]->link = $nggRewrite->get_permalink(array (’gallerytag’ => $tag->slug));
$tags[ $key ]->id = $tag->term_id;
}

$out = ‘

‘;

return $out;
}

and replace it with this:

function nggTagCloud($args =”, $template = ”) {
global $nggRewrite;

// $_GET from wp_query
$tag = get_query_var(’gallerytag’);
$pageid = get_query_var(’pageid’);

// look for gallerytag variable
if ( $pageid == get_the_ID() || !is_home() ) {
if (!empty( $tag )) {

$slug = esc_attr( $tag );
$defaults = array(
’smallest’ => 8, ‘largest’ => 22, ‘unit’ => ‘pt’, ‘number’ => 45,
‘format’ => ‘flat’, ‘orderby’ => ‘name’, ‘order’ => ‘ASC’,
‘exclude’ => ”, ‘include’ => ”, ‘link’ => ‘view’, ‘taxonomy’ => ‘ngg_tag’
);
$args = wp_parse_args( $args, $defaults );

$tags = get_terms( $args['taxonomy'], array_merge( $args, array( ‘orderby’ => ‘count’, ‘order’ => ‘DESC’ ) ) ); // Always query top tags

foreach ($tags as $key => $tag ) {

$tags[ $key ]->link = $nggRewrite->get_permalink(array (’gallerytag’ => $tag->slug));
$tags[ $key ]->id = $tag->term_id;
}
$out = ‘

’ . wp_generate_tag_cloud( $tags, $args ) . ‘

’ . nggShowGalleryTags( $slug );
return $out;
}
}

$tags = get_terms( $args['taxonomy'], array_merge( $args, array( ‘orderby’ => ‘count’, ‘order’ => ‘DESC’ ) ) ); // Always query top tags

foreach ($tags as $key => $tag ) {

$tags[ $key ]->link = $nggRewrite->get_permalink(array (’gallerytag’ => $tag->slug));
$tags[ $key ]->id = $tag->term_id;
}

$out = ‘

’ . wp_generate_tag_cloud( $tags, $args ) . ‘

’;

return $out;
}

That forces the page with the tagcloud on to show the tagcloud, even if a tag has already been selected.

You can further modify the $out = ‘

’ . wp_generate_tag_cloud( $tags, $args ) . ‘

’; line to add more html into you tag cloud (as we have done to show the thought bubble with modal javascript popup window) – in which case don’t forget to modify both instances of that code so that it shows both when the page first presents, and when a tag has been selected.

In order to avoid getting a blank page with just a tag cloud on it the first time you visit the page, we have set the URL of the page linked to from Portfolio on our navigation menu to load images with the tag “latest” using this URL format: http://www.metanym.com/portfolio/?gallerytag=latest.

Now all that is not elegant coding as such, just a hack to deliver some functionality we wanted to see in NEXTGen, so we hope it’s of use to Wordpress users out there.

eCommerce Best Practice

jon — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 14:37:40 +0000

eCommerce

Codes of Best Practice

There are two main objectives for an online shop. Drive as many customers towards it, then do everything you can to convert as many of those customers as possible into buyers. The latter relies upon the products you’re selling, the service you offer and the design and functionality of your website.

The primary purpose of the website is to sell, sell more and sell again, yet so many websites set up many obstacles to prevent this.

If an ecommerce website is not simple to use and easy to buy from, then merchants are not realising their true sales potential. Poor quality design and complicated processes can seriously limit companies when expanding and growing their online business.

At metanym web design, we pride ourselves on producing eCommerce websites, which look great, are as easy as possible to use and super simple to manage.

We have studied the best eCommerce practises from the world’s leading online retailers such as Amazon, eBay and eBuyer to produce our eCommerce Codes of Best Practice which we use in the construction of every eCommerce website we build.

Few merchants realise that even small and subtle changes can have a huge impact on sales figures… we do. We offer all of our clients the very best of what is available in online retail technology, to ensure their maximum potential is realised.

We then continue to work closely with each of our clients to ensure that high levels of success are maintained throughout the life of their website.

Check through our eCommerce Codes of Best Practice to see what we put into our online shops.

1. Build the design around sound SEO principals [ back to top ]

SEO, or Search Engine Optimisation, is the science of making your website appear higher up in search engine results. Many people have their websites built and then add some SEO stuff in at the end. We start with SEO and build your website around that, because if no-ones visiting your site, what the point of having one in the first place.

Building a website this way round ensures that your customers are getting exactly what they want when they enter your store.

If you’re selling motorcycle gear and we discover that most people going to motorcycle gear shops do so after searching for Arai Helmets, then you’re going to need a picture of an Arai Helmet on the front page alongside other leading products and leading brands.

This will immediately appeal directly to your largest customer base whilst offering all other customers clear and concise information for them to find exactly what they want as well.

Understand who your customers are and what they want, and the design of the website becomes a lot easier

2. Before you can start selling products, you need to sell your company [ back to top ]

People make their mind up about a company within the first 2 seconds of entering their website. If they like the look of your website, they are more likely to buy from you again and again which is the name of the game.

Imagine how much it would cost to build a grand department store on Oxford Street. We can build you the Internet equivalent for relatively speaking, next to nothing.

Uncluttered, stunning designs with beautiful imagery, not a lot of text, and the simplest functionality, have the greatest instant appeal

The opening page should not be crowded with information as people can only look at one thing at once, and it needs to look supremely professional.

Navigation needs to be simple and clear with the different sections of the store clearly labelled. We design all our navigation for first time users so it is as simple as possible to use.

Display daily or weekly offers to entice customers.

Appeal directly to your main and most profitable customers first. If there are sections of your store that you want to drive traffic to, make it easy and quick for people to get there.

And above all else, Sell Sell Sell. How many clicks does it take from entering a website to getting an item to checkout? We work hard to keep this to an absolute minimum.

3. You need a full Content Management System (CMS) [ back to top ]

Having a website built is just the start of your eCommerce activity. It will require constant editing, updating and tweaking to promote optimal productivity.

Having a complete CMS will allow the website owners to make these changes as frequently as they like with no additional cost to them.

A well constructed Content Management System should be easy to use and have all the functionality a you need to run your online store with complete control.

4. Information is Key [ back to top ]

A good CMS should allow you to gain instant access to useful statistics from your site. This should include:

How many visits you are getting?

Which pages they are going to?

How long they are spending there?

Which page do they leave your site from?

You also need to know how people arrive at your website. Are they coming direct from typing in the URL, from a link on another page or after a search on a search engine?

If it’s a search, what terms were they searching for?

What countries are your visitors coming from?

Advanced CMS’s will allow you to get live information about who’s in your site right now:

How long have they been there?

Are they registered user?

If so, who are they?

Which page are they on?

What have they got in their basket?

All of this information is absolutely crucial for you to adjust your website design, functionality, product range and pricing to yield maximum results for your company.

5. Use colour to control customers [ back to top ]

We can encourage certain activities from customers through the use of colour. We do this by first finding an appropriate colour to be your Control Colour.

A Control Colour is a prominent colour which we use for the primary features of any eCommerce website, which must above all else, stand out.

These primary features are:

Search function

‘Add to basket’ buttons

‘View basket’ button

‘Proceed to checkout’ button

Contact area

It’s like when you’re looking in a crowd for someone wearing a red hat. You manage to block all other colour out and only focus on anything that’s red. Your customers will quickly build up an association with the Control Colour, which they will always be able to find as quickly as possible, when looking for these important features.

6. Use headlines and subheadings [ back to top ]

Newspapers use Large Headlines with explanatory sub headings to allow readers to skim through a paper and get to the stories they want to read… fast!

This principal, when applied to a website allows visitors to quickly understand what information is being presented on each page. They make your website more usable and allows shoppers to find what they’re looking for more efficiently.

7. Breadcrumbs tell people exactly where they are [ back to top ]

Breadcrumbs (a piece of text at the top of the webpage – see below) are fantastic for showing shoppers exactly where they are within your site’s structure. Customers can clearly see where they’ve come from and where they are now. This allows them to move between sections efficiently and to get to the products they’re looking for fast.

Breadcrumbs can also help with SEO when search engines are crawling your site for more information on what you sell and who your target market is.

8. Make sure your contact details are always clearly visible [ back to top ]

Always make sure the contact details are displayed clearly on every single page. It should be accessible without having to scroll down a page (i.e. above the fold line) and it should always be in the same place on every page.

This is an absolute must and a mistake many websites make.

Although the majority of your custom will come through your online checkout, some customers may prefer to order via the phone or email. If you do not have contact details within easy reach, then you may be losing out on potential custom.

Also, online shoppers, just like real-world shoppers, can require assistance at any point of the buying process, and at that point, they need to be able to contact you quickly without frustratingly looking for your details. And it might be the page that they are currently on which they wish to talk about, so they won’t want to have to go to a different page to get hold of your contact details.

It also helps to strengthen customer relations. It might be that you don’t have what they’re looking for, so it’s much better that they call you so you can at least get their contact details, than lose them to another website.

9. Make sure the Search function is always visible [ back to top ]

Some customers have the time to browse and others want to get what they’re looking for and get out of there as quickly as possible. Good eCommerce websites should cater for both of these users and everything else in between. Therefore, all eCommerce sites need a prominent search function of some sort above the fold line on each page.

A Search Function allows customers to get straight to the thing they are looking for which optimises the shopping experience to encourage repeat business and word of mouth marketing.

It should always be in easy reach and preferably in the Control Colour to stand out whenever a shopper needs to find it.

10. Use predictive search functions [ back to top ]

State of the art technology allows search functions to display suggested words that can help lead customers to exactly what they want more quickly, whilst also displaying a range of other options and ideas they might not have thought of.

So if you’re looking for an Oak Table, as soon as you start typing in O…A… It will instantly bring up Oak Table in the dropdown Search Field, at the same time as displaying – Oak Chair, Oak Bed, Large Oak Dresser etc

This provides users with an improved shopping experience and is used by the leading eCommerce websites.

11. Allow customers to narrow down their search results as desired [ back to top ]

Depending on your range of products, you might want to allow shoppers to refine their searches. EBay do this very well and allow customers to narrow down their search via whatever categories are appropriate for that product. So if you’re searching for shoes, you can narrow down your search via Shoe Type, Size, Colour, Price, and Material etc.

Allowing customers to refine and sort through their results will help them find the perfect item and makes the shopping process more enjoyable. It helps customers find what they are looking for in a fast, efficient manner so they can proceed to the next step in the buying process. It also helps increase conversions, sales, order amounts and raises customer retention

12. Allow shoppers to view large numbers of products exactly as they wish [ back to top ]

All customers are different. Giving them the freedom to explore your products, as they want to, is a massive advantage and gives customers a sense of customisation on your store.They may wish to view 20 products per page or 50. They may wish to look at them in a list view or a grid view. Giving customers the functionality to customise your search pages allows for a more enhanced shopping experience, as they are engaging with your online shop exactly as they want to.

13. Allow shoppers to sort their search results as they wish [ back to top ]

When presented with a large list of products, customers have different criteria for exploring them.This again allows customers to have the shopping experience they want.

They might wish to order their results via price, popularity or alphabetically

14. Show suggested products before the checkout process [ back to top ]

Many people think that the reason the likes of Amazon use the suggested products section, is to sell you similar products instead. It isn’t. It’s there to help customers confirm that the item they’ve selected is actually what they want. This confirmation process happens in the rejecting of other items they don’t want i.e. those you’re suggesting to them. This is a great help in reducing shopping cart abandon rates

Obviously some customers will actually browse Suggested Products if they are more suitable and add them to their cart instead. Other similar devices include:

Grouping – buy this item as well and get 10% off both products

Accessories – other items that would look great with this product are…

Other Customers Bought – Other customers who bought this item, also bought these

These are especially useful if customers have arrived at this product through a very specific search as they can now see what else you have to offer

15. Make all text interesting, to the point and in plain English [ back to top ]

Nobody can be bothered to read lots of text on a website, so keep the information brief and use plain English to allow the quickest understanding of what you are saying.

Always assume that anyone looking at your site has little time and needs to absorb information as quickly as possible, and remember that you’re selling a product/service here – they don’t want War and Peace, they just need the necessary information required to make the purchase. Give them the option to “read more” if they require.

The longer time a customer is spent reading irrelevant information, the less time they have to shop. Short, sharp and concise is most profitable

16. Don’t force customers to register for an account before they can add items to their basket [ back to top ]

This is an important one. You want your customers to fill their baskets high and get excited about their purchases before you take them through the additional step of registering for an account.

Then, when they’re ready to buy, ask for their details. Giving them the option to register an account at the point of checkout, has been proven to increase sales, help to retain users and lower cart abandonment rates

17. Make a summary of the Shopping Basket available all the time [ back to top ]

This device is great for reassuring customers that the items they are selecting are actually going into their basket, how many items they’ve selected and how much they’ve spent. Openness and honesty is essential to ensure repeat business

It is also useful if you offer free delivery over a certain amount, because it will encourage them to continue adding products to achieve that figure

18. A full view of the Shopping Basket should always be one click away [ back to top ]

The shopping basket button should be bold, clear and in the Control Colour. This is critical as it is fundamental to the buying process.

The instant a customer wants to look in their basket, they should be able to

19. Make the actual Shopping Basket easy and clear to edit and update [ back to top ]

A shopping basket has 3 essential functions

1. To display it’s content with the freedom to edit it

2. To invite customers to continue shopping

3. To allow them to proceed to the checkout clearly and swiftly

Customers need to be able to change their mind. They need to be able to take items out of their basket, add new ones and change quantities easily and quickly.

If you don’t give customers this freedom, you will increase your cart abandoned rates by offering a poorer quality shopping experience.

A summary of the basket should be available at the top of the page with a more detailed description beneath, with pictures if required.

The CONTINUE SHOPPING buttons should be prominent and in the Control Colour.

You could also present special offers, what other customers bought and related products to encourage this activity. Or add x amount of products to your basket and qualify for free delivery.

The Shopping Basket is also the start of the checkout process and let’s face it, that’s the entire site, so PROCEED TO CHECKOUT needs to be big and bold – above the fold line AND at the bottom of the basket.

20. ADD TO BASKET Buttons can make or break a store [ back to top ]

We are interested in converting shoppers to buyers. This happens through a single button – the ADD TO BASKET button.

It needs to be big, bold and in the Control Colour. It needs to be at the top of the page and at the bottom of it

It needs to be on the product searches pages and on the product description pages.

Wording is also important. BUY NOW or ORDER NOW can appear intimidating, especially to new users. ADD TO BASKET or ADD TO CART seem much less threatening and adds to a more enjoyable shopping experience

Once the button has been pressed, the response from the website should also be in keeping with the customer’s expectations – their basket needs to be updated (obviously) and they need visual feedback to confirm that their request has been processed.

Increasing conversions, increasing sales and increasing amounts should be at the heart of all sound eCommerce design. ADD TO BASKET buttons play a major role in ensuring optimum success.

21. The Checkout process should be super simple and clutter free [ back to top ]

So the shopper has a full basket and now they’re ready to pay. So many websites make this process so complicated and set up loads of obstacles to hinder this process.

The purpose of the checkout process is quite simple – Who are they? Where do they want their products sending? And how are they going to pay?

From the moment the customer clicks PROCEED TO CHECKOUT, the only objective should be – to process this order and get the card details off the customer as quickly as possible. This benefits the website owner and it also benefits the customer as well.

Any visual clutter and superfluous information, other than that which aids the checkout process should be removed. Ideally it should be a 3-step process where it is very clear and easy to move from one step to the next. This increases conversions, increases sales, raises order amounts and keeps customers coming back

22. ADD TO WISHLIST [ back to top ]

Obviously the main aim is to convert customers into buyers. ADD TO BASKET is always the main function, but ADD TO WISHLIST should not be overlooked.

The ADD TO WISHLIST function is there to catch customers who are not buyers just yet. It’s a chance to get customers to register their details to make it easier to buy the item upon their return.

When customers view their wishlist, it should be very easy to add items to the basket or to forward the wishlist onto friends or family who might be looking to by them as a gift for weddings, birthdays or Christmas.

The ADD TO WISHLIST function should always be less prominent than the ADD TO BASKET function. Let’s not lose site of website’s primary function – to sell. The wishlist will help increase conversions, increase registered users, increase repeat buyers and first time orders.

23. Prices, Savings, Taxes and Shipping Costs need to be clearly displayed [ back to top ]

People are more likely to buy from a site if all of the pricing information is clearly displayed up front. Certain Airline companies withhold many costs right up until the final payment page which comes as a great shock to customers who thought they were getting a flight for £20 (as displayed in the search engine results or on the price comparison site), then, after 10 minutes of their life has passed, they discovered that the actual cost is £200.

This is a guaranteed way to ensure that customers not only abandon their basket at that point, but also never return to your shop.

Ensure that all costs are clearly displayed.
The running total of their basket is prominent in the header.
All savings are clearly indicated right the way through the basket and checkout process.
Shipping costs are always available

If your company offers free shipping over a certain amount, displaying the running total can really help drive customers forward to filling their basket.

Overall, being honest and upfront about prices will increase conversions, increase registered users, increase repeat buyers and first time orders.

24. Show stock and availability of products before the checkout process [ back to top ]

A good eCommerce website will display live information regarding stock so that a customer knows exactly what is on offer.

If they don’t discover this until the checkout process, they will become frustrated, abandon their basket and probably never return.

If a product is out of stock, you can use this opportunity to:

Recommend a similar item
egister their interest (ADD TO WISHLIST) so they can be notified when it comes back in stock
Give us a call and we’ll tell you if there’s anything similar
Tell them when the item will return to stock

Showing stock and availability as early in buying process as possible should help reduce abandoned baskets and will make the job of customer service easier in the long run.

25. Keep security badges, trust certificates and an updated SSL certificate in place so shoppers can tell your site is secure [ back to top ]

Customers need to know that they can trust your site to protect their privacy, personal information, billing information and any other private information shared during the transaction.Many eCommerce merchants use security badges and trust certificates from places like Hacker Safe, VeriSign or STruste to show shoppers that they are buying from a secure store or brand. It is also necessary to have an updated SSL certificate so the appropriate “lock icon” appears in the lower right hand corner of shoppers’ browsers when they enter a secure section of your store or a secure checkout page.

Implementing badges and certificates should help to reduce cart abandonment and may even help to increase overall orders or store sales

26. Offer a variety of payment options [ back to top ]

Their basket is full and they are at the end of the checkout process. Don’t lose them now!

Giving customers a good choice of payment options will reduce basket abandon rates and increase conversions.

Some people prefer debit cards to credit cards. Other might prefer PayPal or Google Checkout because they have an account with them. Offering customers the freedom to choose will remove this potential obstacle.

You might also wish to include a phone number for customers to call you to discuss other payment options such as Cheques or Postal Orders.

27. Confirm orders immediately, via email and with as much information as possible [ back to top ]

It is important to display all the information regarding a customer’s order straight away in a confirmation page within the website. The confirmation page should tell the customer everything they need to know about their order:

Items Ordered
Order Number
Shipping Tracking Number
Date of expected delivery
Prices
Shipping method
Payment Type
Delivery Address
Billing Address
And ALL details about YOUR Company so they can easily contact you if they wish.

Once this information has been displayed in a confirmation page, it should be immediately emailed to the customer’s email address to ensure that the overall shopping experience has been completed which maximum customer satisfaction.

This should save you lots of time wasted in dealing with customers calling your support staff and promote the highest return rates from your customers.

28. Rigorous User testing is critical when designing and evolving websites [ back to top ]

The owner of the website will have many ideas how their shop should look and feel. The designers and programmers will also have their take on what the overall customer experience should be. But at the end of the day, the customer is king.

Carrying out real user testing, with real users in the setting that they would be using their computer is the only way to get useful results.

Start by gathering together a series of potential users who would be likely to use your site. This is not as straightforward as it sounds. For example, the biggest buyer of male aftershave is…women. So understand your customer first.

The next thing to do is to find out when they would be using your site. Is it for 3 minutes during a hectic lunch break at work or is it for half an hour at night with a glass of wine in their hand and the TV on.

You then need a series of websites for them to observe:

Your website (if you have one) is a good starting point
Alternative designs of your website
Competitors websites

You then need to observe your potential client interacting with all aspects of the websites. What are their initial reactions? What are they looking for? What are they looking at? What do they want to do next? etc

Using a Video Camera and Microphone is great for capturing first hand feedback but that’s just the start. Once you have this information, it needs interpreting to understand how that impacts the design of the site. You need to understand why a customer is doing or thinking certain things and this can be quite tricky.

This should certainly be carried out before a new website is launched, but also at regular intervals throughout it’s life to ensure that it is always performing at it’s optimum.

Small changes can have massive impacts!

In conclusion [ back to top ]

The beauty of the internet is that a small business somewhere can have a highly professional and effective eCommerce website for a relatively small cost.

Having a website professionally built which looks great, functions clearly and robustly, and which considers these Code of Best Practice will ensure that your online business has the best chance of survival and success.

Once built, a successful eCommerce website needs to be properly supported, rigorously managed and regularly developed to ensure that it grows as your business grows, towards your highest aspirations.

We wish you all the success you deserve

Review of Screenflow screencast software for the Mac

jon — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 10:09:11 +0000

Hi everyone – I’ve been wanting to get into putting some video on the blog for ages. I particularly want to do website tours and a few othe ideas I have which involve “screencasting”, i.e. where you make a video of what is on your computer screen, with a little “talking head” commentary superimposed. In addition to audio, the talking head makes it a bit more interesting, and personal (now you know what I look like – no comments please!).

I remembered a blog post I saw on Boagworld, Paul Boag’s excellent podcast and blog vehicle, about capturing video, and he recommended Screenflow for Mac users (and Camtasia for Windows). So I downloaded it and gave it a go. Overall, really easy to use with lots of features, and for $99 I reckon very good value. I have used the demo version for this video, which is why it has Screenflow Demo emblazened across it, but I thought that was somehow appropriate to the subject anyway! I will definitely be buying a licence soon.

It’s also the first time I have used the Bubblecast video upload plugin for Wordpress, which on the basis of this first use, is going to be number 12 in the list of 10 Dynamite Wordpress Plugins!

Enjoy (or not!). Look out Hollywood, here I come!!

http://bubblesoftstore.com

10 Dynamite Wordpress Plugins

jon — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 11:37:45 +0000

Anyone using Wordpress to power their blog or website is probably aware that there are a myriad of Plugins available for the system, either from Wordpress themselves, or from a myriad of 3rd party developers. Plugins extend or modify the functionality of the Wordpress system, covering everything from adding sections like ecommerce or booking calendars, to layout options, to integrating with social networking applications.

Here are just a few that we would heartily recommend:

1. All in One SEO Pack

This one is really an essential. It helps you optimise your blog or website for Search Engines like Google. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is vital if your site is going to be visible amongst the mass of competing sites out there. All in One SEO Pack allows you to fine tune settings such at page titles and meta tags for each page, improve navigation, and many other advanced settings. Don’t set up a blog without it!

All in One SEO Pack >>

2. Contact Form 7

The best contact form plugin for Wordpress that we have found. Every website and blog should have a way for visitors to get in touch. Blogs also allow for commenting on posts of course, but sometimes you just want to contact the author on a general issue. Certainly where Wordpress is being used to run a business website, a contact form is a must have, as well as all the usual contact details appearing of course.

Contact Form 7 can manage multiple contact forms, plus you can customise the form and the email contents. The form supports Ajax-powered submitting, and the CAPTCHA anti-spam system.

Contact Form 7 >>

3. TweetMeme Button

A little button that goes at the top of all your blog posts – visitors can click the button to send a Tweet on Twitter about your blog post. A great way to get others to publicise and promote your blog or website. A must have in our view, even if you don’t use Twitter yourself (and if not, why not, by the way?!). The button also show how many times your blog post has been tweeted about via the button.

TweetMeme Button >>

4. Twitter for Wordpress

Another Twitter related plugin, but this time inbound rather than outbound. A sidebar widget which displays your own recent Tweets. A great way to tie-in your Twitter and blog or website activity.

Twitter for Wordpress >>

Also worth checking out:

Twitter Widget Pro >>

5. NextGEN Gallery

A fully featured image/photo gallery plugin for Wordpress. There are hundreds of gallery plugins for Wordpress – what impressed about this one is that (as the author himself modestly points out!) it seems to combine all the good features of all the others. With multiple templates, effects, and a simple-to-use admin section, it is our first choice for an image gallery. There are also a load of plugins available to extend the functionality of the plugin!

NextGen Gallery >>

6. Send link to friend

Another great way to get your message out there by allowing visitors to send a link to the page or post to a friend via a simple sidebar widget form. They enter their friend’s email address and an optional message, and off it goes! It is Ajax based so there is no page refresh, and also optionally supports CAPTCHA anti-spam measure.

Send link to friend >>

7. qTranslate

An amazing multi-language plugin. Allows users to flick between different language versions of your website. Many languages are supported out of the box with standard phrases already translated. The admin can enter multiple language versions of a page, or link to automated translation services which do it for you. Very configurable and one of those plugins that really beautifully serves its purpose.

qTranslate >>

8. WP-Print

A plugin which adds a “print this page/post” link to each page or post, which displays a printer-friendly version of the page (without styling). Via the admin, you can configure whether images in the post are displayed, whether comments are included etc. We don’t advocate printing things unncecessarily, but for certain types of blog or website where an easy print option is needed, this plugin provides it nicely. A little complex to install as you have to add a line of code to your themes template via the appearance editor, but full instructions are provided for the faint-hearted!

WP-Print >>

9. WP Shopping Cart

Ecommerce/shopping cart functionality for your Wordpress powered blog or website. WP Shopping Cart is a simple shopping cart plugin which integrates with Paypal or Google Checkout. Now you’re not going to want to run a full online store with lots of products or categories of products using this plugin, but if you have a few items to sell that relate to your blog or website, this is a really simple way of doing it. It supports downloadable products like ebooks or audio files also, so if you’re a blogger with material that can be sold in this way, this is a good way of integrating a commercial aspect to your blog.

WP Shopping Cart >>

10. Exclude Pages

Great for adding links to pages like Terms & Conditions, Privacy Policy etc, which you don’t necessarily want to have cluttering up your main navigation menu. This plugin gives you a little tick box on each page’s admin page, ticked by default, which you can untick to exclude it from the main navigation. A great way to add pages in this way without sacrificing the dyanmic nature of your site’s menu.

Exclude Pages >>

11. HTML Page Sitemap

OK I know this post is entitled 10 Dynamite Wordpress Plugins, but I got to 10 and realised this one really needed to go in! And 11 Dynamite Wordpress Plugins did not appeal to my sense of symmetry. So view this one as a bonus!

Help users and Seach Engine Optimisation alike by adding a sitemap to your blog or website. This plugin creates a dynamic page, updated when you add new pages or posts. It’s very configurable, with the possibility of excluding certain pages, or ordering in a certain way.

HTML Page Sitemap >>

Well, that’s it – hope you found it useful. Use the comments below to add your own suggestion please!