Piwik is a tag oriented system that links to your pages with embedded image and js. At this point I have it installed on Drupal, Word Press, Zen Cart and a one-off site Zen Cart hybrid. So far I’m impressed with the interface. The clarity and efficiency of use are excellent.

The install is designed to be simple and as web centric as possible. It’s a simple install and so much better than the systems of old with cumbersome config files and cronjobs. However, There was a problem that will probably trip some folks up. Even with the problems I had, the system was installed and integrated in less than 5 minutes without reading a bunch of documentation! Here’s what I did to get it running.

1. download the code
2. unzip the source to the directory I wanted it in.
3. I used existing databases and usernames. Thus, creation of a new user and database was not needed.
4. READ THE README FILE
5. At this point there were permissions problems. Even though I had 777 set on the piwik directory. The reason was, piwik created it’s tmp directory with permissions that prevented it from writing to tmp. I though that was odd and it’s probably a system quirk not a real problem with Piwik. The fix was to set the permissions on tmp. I reloaded the page that showed the error and it presented another and different error regarding permissions again. …OK. So, I set permissions on tmp and it’s contents again. That fixed it.
6. After tagging the site I went to piwik and received and error regarding the ALTER command. Piwik needs ALTER permissions on it’s tables in order to install plugins. So, I whipped out the MySQL Administrator GUI and gave it ALTER. Unfortunately, the install was screwed up even after installing the plugin and giving it ALTER. So, I reinstalled it all. That part took about 2 minutes. ..no big whoop.
7. I logged in to Piwik and created a user for my client and couple of sites.

All in all I’m quite satisfied with Piwik. I especially like the dynamic nature of the interface. It does what I want and I can develop on it for my own purposes! …ssssswwwweeeeeet

Good work Piwik folks!

-Jeremy Brooks

I chose a lesser known php framework called Zoop. Zoop provides a lot that the others didn’t and it was really easy to learn. Something I really liked was the zoop zone development methodology. The code just flowed once I learned the basics. Everything I needed, including javascript effects and ajax controls provided by Scriptaculous and Prototype, respectively, was there without me having to mess around with installing other libraries. The next step was to find a CMS (content management system) that would play nice with a frame work like Zoop.

The goal was to do as little access control and front end development as possible. That way I could build the site fast and keep it focused on it’s real purpose. That is, to save time and make money by allowing me continue to use the marketing components on my own sites and by providing a subscription based system for others.

I went with Drupal 5 for the CMS. After poking around in Drupal and sorting through various Drupal support posts and how-to pages. I figured out how I could integrate Drupal with Zoop. It’s a relatively simple way to make Zoop use Drupal sessions and access management instead of it’s own.

The result was a real development framework with the power of Drupal and all it’s modules hooks, etc.  No drupal modules were developed and no Drupal core hacking is involved.

In this case, the basic trick is to swap out the session class used in Zoop with that of Drupal. Then in your Zoop zone file you’ll magically have access to the many Drupal objects. Such as that containing session and user info and more.  Obviously it’s a little more involved then that and I’ll get into it later.

After I stuck my Drupal in my Zoop…

I created a content page in Drupal that loads pages from my Zoop app. Those pages are actually javascript files that trigger ajax actions once the page is loaded. Depending on the drupal user permissions Zoop will grant or deny access to the requested component. That’s a simple but oh-so-helpful thing for a developer that doesn’t care to learn how do complicated application development in a Drupal module.  Now my app is loosely coupled with Drupal and I can upgrade and extend Drupal all I want with little effect on my core application written in Zoop.

You can even embed flash over ajax and anything else you can image with Drupal controlling the gates with the freedom of a framework and brass tacks php development.

I’m in the process of doing the same thing for a client and will be documenting the process in detail this time. For now you can read more on the Zoop site.

I hope someone finds this useful.

According to Leichtman Research About 43% of US households do not have broadband and a 600K page will be too slow on dial-up and isdn.

With the value proposition in the flash, it’ll be the last thing to
load!

I partially agree. Banners don’t work effectively enough for most e-com companies to make them profitable. As a sole means of creating product awareness they may be a waste of time. Right now, the most effective means of building lasting product awareness on-line is through content. If you have a product that is worthy of review and you’re confident that it will generate positive feedback, send it out the top review sites in your niche. Request a link back with the terms that you want rank for in the anchor text. Guide the reviewer in understanding the value proposition of your product and ask them to write about it. You can usually get the product back so all you’ll be out is shipping. Following this up with text and banner ads will help reinforce what the customer has already read from a third party. You’ll also have lasting effects from the third party content and back links that bring in traffic and build organic rank. Both of which are “free” traffic sources that can convert well. You don’t have that with banners and PPC ads if you stop buying them.

Understand that people trust others to give opinion about your product, not you. By beating the bushes for content and reviews, you’ll leverage the content writers to build brand, trust and rank even without continuing to pay for it.

** For those of you being Zenned (Zen Cart users) I would really appreciate feed back on the Zen Cart modules I’ve mentioned and any others that effect the way customers interact with your site. See the Top ten customer facing Zen Cart modules post to submit your feed back.

So, you have a search term list, you’ve gone through the checkout process, identified problem areas and done everything in your power to make the entire process as smooth and stress free and non-work-like as possible.

A word of warning!

Underestimating the importance of this step is very easy, especially for folks that are new to e-commerce. Your products do not speak for themselves on-line. Make sure you turn your landing page into a compelling engaging experience about your product. Most of your customers will leave your site after they decide the page is not going to give them what they’re after. From there, the ones that decide to stay, will start converting but most will probably bail out and abandon the checkout process. Some only wanted to compare cart prices. Some stopped to think about what your were asking of them and lost sight of the original intent and left either to buy later, not at all, or somewhere else.

By speaking to only the folks that are most likely to convert, you’ll keep your conversion rate and profit margins high with less money dumped into buying traffic.

Now is probably a good time for me to mention that visitors to your site are generally broken in to two groups, hunters and browsers.

• Hunters are folks that are after something that you may or may not have. They’re the customers that want to convert and the ones I’ve been talking about. For them you need to provide them with answers to their questions and the ability to get more information should they decide to stick around. They want to know that they’re in the right place first and second that your site is the best place to get what they want. If they came to you looking for pancake batter then tell them that the page they’re on will give them pancake batter. Don’t tell them that you make the best or that you’ve been in business for 140 years and grandma Mothballs made the the original recipe until they want to know those things. People tend to gravitate to those that give them what they want. Leave the junk about your company out of the picture but accessible.
• Browsers are folks that are interested in what you have but may not be ready to buy. Moreover, they may not know what they want. For them, make the site compelling to navigate with easy to read and understand navigation and helpful but, again, easy to follow navigation and interlinking from one page to the next. Give them reason to stay, click your images, read your content and, when ready, return and buy. Things like free shipping, return policy, etc will sink in while they browse but will probably not compel them to stick around and develop a relationship with your site.

Now that you’re clear on what a hunter is I’ll explain more about how to appeal to them and how to make them leave. Hunters are not any particular personality type or age or color. They’re folks that have already decided what they want and are now looking for the best place to get it. It’s that simple. Don’t waste there time making them decipher a product page or home page with mixed information about your company, categories, founders, etc.

** Always send hunters to a landing page designed for hunters. DO NOT send a hunter to your home page. Don’t mix goals and don’t try to up sell or cross sell a hunter abruptly with out assuring them that your page is the place to be first. The funny thing about cross selling and up selling is that it can increase your sales but, it can also interrupt the process and confuse folks. Having categories and banners on your product page does the same thing. That’s why I always use a landing page that has a specific purpose. I don’t include anything in my landing pages that doesn’t address the needs of my hunter. There’s is no category navigation and invitation of any kind to go off in a different direction. I’m not trying to prevent them from checking out the rest of my site. I just don’t want them to get distracted. I usually put a more info link in the landing page that directs them back to the product page for more information. This appeals to the hunters need for more critical decision making data without pushing it down their throat. I give them a choice, but it keeps them focused. Have you noticed the theme here? I’m giving the hunter what she wants not what I want them to have or do. You have to respect and trust the hunter to know what she wants and simply place yourself in the path.

ZenCart Tip: Use the product name and short description to address the hunters basic first question. Let them know that they’re in the right place for the exact thing they’re looking for.

You may be wondering… “how the heck do I create a landing page in Zen Cart or <insert your cart here>“. The answer, for Zen Cart anyway, is you can’t! But, that shouldn’t stop you. If you can already design and code a page, just whip up a very nice page that focuses exclusively on a single product or conversion goal, theme similar to your main site and just publish it on its own. Hell, it doesn’t even need to be on the same host as your cart. In your landing page, put a link to the product page for more information. If you’re a more sophisticated designer, put an add-to-cart button right there on the landing page and put all the critical decision making data on the landing page with a more info link as well for really hungry hunters.

Here are some examples of landing pages:

1. Go To My PC
2. USB Turntable
3. Ford Truck Price Quote

The USB Turntable page converts exceptionally well for the search terms it’s intended for. By “exceptionally well” I mean greater then 20% of visitors actually buy. I could not achieve that with a product page that is not designed to appeal to a certain group of hunters looking for a USB Turntable.

None of these pages is terribly complex and you can probably achieve something similar with practice or help. Landing page design is not expensive and the returns are huge. What would happen to your profit if you had a 50% jump in conversion rate? What if you went from a 1% to 3% conversion rate? That’s potentially a 300% increase in your sales with no additional traffic.

So, do you see the point in spending lots of time and brain power on the landing page and conversion process?

After you’ve convinced the hunter to proceed, show them that it’s safe to buy and the price is right. This is where shipping promotions, hacker safe logos, etc are important. I don’t use more then three “seals” to influence trust. Actually, I use two or one typically. I can’t find the research at the moment, but I’ve read studies where more then that decreased conversion rate. Presumably this is due to the distraction they cause.

For most of you I recommend doing some competitive research. Just go search Live.com, Yahoo and Google for your search terms. Checkout your competitors sites. What do they lack? Can you compete with them on price? Sometimes competitors will give you an easy way to show the hunter and the browser how you provide a greater value. Perhaps it’s price; perhaps it’s just because they have no idea how to appeal to the hunter and you can easily spot ways to improve.

Zen Cart merchant observation: I’ve seen many Zen Cart sites over the years and the common theme in nearly all of them is this: they’re almost always too text dependent with to many options and no clear path for the customer to follow aside from the “add to cart” button. The product pages are trying to appeal to everyone at once. Some of them have huge headers that distract from the actual product on the page and some have hard to read navigation that confuses product information with navigation. Most have neglected product images. Don’t be surprised when you don’t make a sale using a stock template with a few color changes and a new header while you ignore what I’m saying here. Respect your visitors ability to spot an amateur and respect their time. You must compete in the real world and put your brain into learning and creative mode.

Page layout tip

There’s an analogy I like to use to describe page layout for e-commerce…

A product page should be like a clear shallow pool. The product or primary conversion goal/object should sit on top of the water while everything else should be submereged but still visible. When your customer visits the page, important text and graphics/images that distract from answering the primary questions should be available but not grap attention. Anything else should go away! A landing page is more like a clear puddle. That is smaller and more more localized. I accomplish this submerged effect with font color and size changes, gradients and subtle textures and drop shadow or color and space. www.apple.com designers likes to use images, space and contrast to accomplish this. Anything on the surface of the water is key information for the hunter and should be above the fold (visible without scrolling).

Do you think you’re ready to start throwing traffic at your pages ? …perhaps, read it again and digest more! Leave a comment and ask a question.

In part three of this series I’ll discuss testing the water with Pay par click and some search optimization basics for e-commerce with tips for ZenCart users both new and old.

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I’d like to hear from ZenCart users new and old about your favourite customer facing Zen Cart modules and your experiences in how your customers appeared to react to them. These are the key questions to answer:

1. How did the module help your customers?
2. What did you hope to gain by using the module?
3. Did it meet your expectations?
4. Do you think it made you more money?
5. Did it increase your sales or conversion rate?

This series of posts will cover, for the most part , what I do, to launch a new e-commerce site. It includes specific tips and recommendation and some more complicated SEO and conversion related bits for those that want to step up their game. Really, this is more of a semi-e-book-pamphlet-white-paper-thing than a checklist. enjoy!

You have two goals

1. Get the right people to your site.

2. Convince them using only a web page to trust you with financial information and their desire to own something you say you have.

These goals overlap!

First, you need to think about what it is you’re offering. I’ll use pancake batter as my offer. I’m going to do the following to figure out how to put my offer out there in front of the right people.

1. Think about how people talk and think about pancake batter in a generic way. Make a list of phrase s,nouns, etc that apply. I probably don’t even need to use a keyword tool for this since pancakes are not all that esoteric.

So now I have a list of terms that probably cover the scope of how people talk about and look for pancake batter. My list might look like this

1. pancake batter
2. quality pancake batter
3. home made pancakes
4. wheat pancakes
5. best pancake batter
6. fresh pancake batter
7. batter for pancakes

That’s all I came up with off the top of my head. Now, I’d expand on that list using a keyword tool like one of the following. I would not dive into misspellings and stuff like that just yet.

• https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
• http://tools.seobook.com/keyword-tools/seobook/
• http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/
• http://inventory.overture.com/ (This one is unavailable about 50% of the time)

Now I have a list of 50 or so search terms that accurately describe my content. Next I write a few short 2 -3 line “ads” that I can use on Adwords and Yahoo to test my list of search terms.

After that I take a hard look at the “landing page” that I intend to send this traffic to. Don’t assume you know what a landing page is. A landing page is not a necessarily “product page” and most e-com product page make really lame landing pages. I highly recommend the landing page handbook for anyone wishing to succeed in e-commerce. I make sure that it feels congruent with not only the terms in my list but also my text ads. It’s important that that I don’t loose sight of my visitors desire here. I’ll stick something like “pancake batter” in an <h1></h1> tag and in the title to show relevance to the visitor human (as well as the search engine). Sometimes, I even make my pages dynamic and change the copy on the fly depending on the search terms in the (more on that later). Showing relevancy to the visitor in this way will increase conversion rate. I address important questions that might be going through the visitors head. …The first of which is:

Is this the right place or is the site going to waste my time?

…or something along those lines!

It is up to the visitor to answer this based on what you show them. Now, I have a fairly unique product with my pancake batter. I don’t need to focus as much on being the price leader and cost benefits as I would if I were selling a usb thumb drive, for instance. In my case, I need to use imagery, good copy writing, and a healthy dose of professionalism and respect to compel my visitors to buy my batter. If the price is reasonable, they’ll buy. I won’t plaster boiler plate copy and stock images with bland copy and expect to survive. I wouldn’t hype up pancake batter like it’s a new car either. This all comes down to speaking to folks in a way they understand. Check

At this point I want to review all the customer facing pages of my pancake batter site. Shipping Policy, Return Policy, Contact Information, Security Seals, etc. need to be very professional, understandable and easily accessible. The most important of these for conversion is likely to be Security Seal, Return Info and Shipping Info. Actually, I’ve seen conversion rate increases of greater than 40% when displaying the Hacker Safe logo on the landing page and next to or above the credit card entry field. …no shit.

Now, because I’m prone to typos, I’ll have someone proof my content and even use Open Office (or Word) to check for spelling and grammatical errors. Believe me, it’s really embarrassing to have a customer point out a misspelling or typo on your site instead of give you money.

Now I put on my customer shoes and step through the entire conversion process starting with the landing page and ending with the thank you page. I take note of everything that distracts me or makes you think …at all. Next I figure out a solution to the distraction and extra thinking problems and fix them one by one. I’m not a fan of any checkout process that’s more then four clicks from shopping cart to thank you page. I know from experience that long check out processes increase cart abandonment which robs you a highly qualified and nearly committed ready to buy customers. The checkout at Amazon.com is nicley refined even with it’s distractions and up selling. It’s fast and easy. It’s done before you know it.

Zen Cart has a couple of great add-ons that reduce the checkout process to 3 clicks including the checkout button and makes the signup form really easy and non-work-like. They are the “Fast and Easy Checkout” and “Checkout Amazon Style”. I use them.

The Amazon Checkout mod has some problems in IE7 and a major display problem in IE6.  In IE7 the form fields are partially shifted to the left.  In IE6 the page is completely useless and unreadable because of the use of % margin setting in the css file.  My modified css file for Amazon Checkout look like this….  you mileage may vary.

the file name is: includes/templates/<template>/css/checkout_login.css

#checkoutLoginDefaultFieldset {border-width: 0px;}
#checkoutLoginDefaultLegend {display: none;}
#checkoutLoginDefaultEmailAddrLabel {width:   166px; padding-left: 50px;}
#newcustomer {margin-top: 3px; margin-left: 210px; /* margin-left: 22%;vertical-align: middle; */ }
#oldcustomer {margin-top: 3px; margin-left: 210px; /* margin-left: 22%; vertical-align: middle; */ }
#loginpassword {margin-top: 3px; margin-left: 225px; /* margin-left: 25%;*/}
#checkoutLoginDefaultPasswordForgotten {margin-left: 220px;}
#checkoutLoginDefaultSubmitButton  {margin-left: 220px;}
#checkoutLoginDefaultPPEC {border-top: 1px solid #c0c0c0;}

It’s important to let people know what credit cards I accept so I’ll stick a nice image of each card in an image near the credit card entry box. People get frustrated when one card doesn’t work for some reason and there is no guidance as to which card to try next. Text is helpful but, at this point I want to be visual and make it easy so I use and image.

Specifically, in Zen Cart, the Fast and Easy Checkout module puts a lot of information on the the single page (in single page mode). I always place a nice subtle dark to light (top-down) gradient in each box on the page to visually separate the elements and make it easier to understand straight away… I favor light blue to white or light beige/pale yellow to white

The next in this series will be out next week.

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