My New Websites Design - Any top tips?

[jimmyservis]

Im currently having a website designed for protect the planet.co.uk which will stock all ecogifts and energy saving gadgets. Im having the site designed by White ****** Creative, and wondered if there are any do's and don'ts people can suggest I may not have thought about? :)

Thanks in advance!

James

P.S - I have no idea what to expect sales wise from a website, so any idea as to number of orders you receive would be great :)

[Red Devil]

With regards to website design, you are in excellent hands with Giles (White ******). Don't worry on that score.

Do's and Dont's. Do you mean on how to promote and market your website? If so ...

1. Optimise your site for the major search engines (SEO). Concentrate on your Meta Titles, Meta Description and page content.
2. Submit your site to the main search engines i.e. Google, Yahoo, Bing. Don't worry about the others. Never pay people to submit it for you. It's free. Once submitted, the search engines should visit your site on a daily basis.

Google

http://www.google.co.uk/addurl/

Yahoo

http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/au/free/submit

Bing (MSN)

http://www.bing.com/webmaster/SubmitSitePage.aspx

3. Open a Google Account and submit your products to Googlebase (Bluepark will generate a Googlebase feed file for you). Googlebase is a good way to get you on Page 1 for ceratin products even in a competitive market.
4. Through your Google Account submit your XML Sitemap. Again Bluepark will generate one for you at www.yoursite.co.uk.sitemap.xml (http://www.yoursite.co.uk.sitemap.xml/)
5. You could look at Google Adwords but this is a specialised area where you can lose a lot of money if you don't know what you are doing.
6. Generally Don't pay for services like Site Submission, SEO when you can do it yourself. There's plenty of articles on SEO.
7. Make aure all your URLs are SEO Friendly. This facility is available on the Product pages in BP. Just tick a box.

There's lots more but that's enough for starters. I'm sure others have their own ideas.

[Neil]

P.S - I have no idea what to expect sales wise from a website, so any idea as to number of orders you receive would be great :)

How can anybody answer this question? - It all depends on so much.

[john]

P.S - I have no idea what to expect sales wise from a website, so any idea as to number of orders you receive would be great :)

If you truly have no idea what sales you will do, why are you doing it?

[jimmyservis]

Thanks Red Devil for the useful advice.

With regards to John/Neil. I have obviously looked at competitors, and done reports on their limited companies. I know what sort of money they are making, and i know if it works it will definitely be worth while. As a my first website, I have no idea as to how long it will take to appear on google, and how many hits websites etc receive. As people running websites on ecommerce sites using the same ecommerce solution, i was hoping for some helpful advice relating to that! Regarding sales wise, I thought maybe some people would be willing to provide personal experience rather than mine exactly.

Thanks :rolleyes:

[little-linguist]

Jimmy - there is no real answer to your question. The number of hits you get depends so much on how you work on your SEO for your website. There is no magic formula for the "right" way of doing this and is an area that you need to keep on top of constantly as google are always changing their criteria for top rankings etc. There is plenty of reading on this forum on this topic if you're interested to read more. You also have to bear in mind how much demand there is for your product. If your product is in high demand then there will probably be a lot of searches for it. If you get your SEO right, this will mean more hits for you, get it not so right and your competitors will get the bulk of hits. If you're in a niche market, there may not be many searches but with less competition, your hits could be higher as they have no competition to choose from.

Then of course, once you have the visitors so many different things depend on whether they stay and order and what they spend. Your site design (and perhaps more importantly, layout / structure) is important, as are your prices. Reputation usually plays a big part. Delivery charges, delivery times, whether things are in stock.... the list goes on.

So in short, I don't think the above posters meant to be unhelpful. They were just trying to explain that trying to estimate how well you might do in terms of number of sales / hits is impossible.

Bluepark is a fantastic e-commerce solution but opening any online shop is just the beginning. You will have to do a lot of work to let people know you're out there etc.

[mikeyred]

How long is a piece of string springs to mind but as LL says, you will stand more chance of finding out with BP than any other ecommerce solution and as you have probably realised by now, only you will be able to answer that one.....

[NicJ]

Quick bit of advice - don't use the submit pages on Google to get your website listed. It can take months and can actually be detrimental to your listing.

The best and quickest way to get your site listed in the main search engines is to get a link from a another website to yours, that way Google will find you all by itself.

One way to do that is but a link to your website in your signature on here, I guarantee it will be quicker than submitting using the forms on the Google site.

The rest of what Red Devil said was spot on (and I wasn't having a go about the other stuf just found it quicker and more productive not to submit)

[MyShinyCar]

Just wanted to say good luck with the website James.

Exciting innit?

Regards, MyshinyCar

[jimmyservis]

Thanks for the advice everyone
And yes, i can't wait to get it started :)