Shopping Cart Software
by Beanbasket eCommerce Web Hosting

Beanbasket News 877-324-2326 February 2008 In this issue... » Beanbasket News » Search Engine Optimization Tips » E-Commerce News » Tip of the Month » Website of the Month Beanbasket News How to Effectively Use Meta Descriptions, Meta Keywords, URL Keywords, and Page Titles to Generate More Site Hits Meta Description The meta description is the description for an item or category. The description is much like the page title. For example: "Beanbasket demo store showcase for hosted ecommerce shopping cart". The description should be a sentence like structure under 20 words. Meta Keywords The keywords are words and phrases that describe the category or item. They are comma separated strings. For example: "Beanbasket, shopping, cart, e-commerce, ecommerce, basket, shopping cart, hosted ecommerce". Use synonyms and organize the keywords in order of importance. The more keywords that can be used increases the chances that a searcher will find your products. Another helpful hint is to also include common misspellings so that items can be found if the searcher doesn't know they spelled the word wrong. URL Keywords URL keywords are keywords that will appear in the URL to further enhance organic SEO ranking. The URL string for a product or category/subcategory is comprised of the domain name, then the category ID, (as items can appear under multiple categories and we want each one to be crawled) then the item ID, then the keywords. URL keywords should be separated by hyphens or underline characters. Look at the following example for better understanding. Example: http://enterprise.beanbasket.com/detail_CA263F__16__fitted_baseball_caps.html     * the URL Keywords in this example are "fitted_baseball_caps" Page Title This is the title that appears in the upper left hand portion of the browser when a Category/Subcategory and Item detail page is displayed. If there is nothing entered, it defaults to the item name or category name. This page title is used for a quick description or to identify the item or product on the page. Example: If the item you were selling was a golf bag, then for the Page Title, you would want to type in something like "Golf Bag" or something similar so at the top left of the page the title would correllate to the item(s) on the page. Page titles are search engine crawled so be sure to include an accurate description of the page just like you are in the Meta Description field. New Beanbasket Features There have been numerous enhancements and a few bug fixes that have been recently released. Please check the release notes in the Help section of the Beanbasket Administrator for details. Some of the highlights include: Search our Knowledgebase for quick online help Support for serialized and unserialized electronic software downloads Add related items directly to cart Powerful and flexible tax tables - U.S. and Canadian   E-Commerce News Is It Time to Scale Up? Signs of E-Commerce System Strain By Pam Baker E-Commerce Times E-commerce is an important sales channel to businesses of all sizes, but when it's a company's sole meal ticket, the stakes are even higher. Threats to Internet profits often lay hidden and customers rarely stop to point them out. "An increase in help-desk call volume is usually the first indicator of trouble in the Web infrastructure," Hon Wong, CEO of Symphoniq, told the E-Commerce Times. "Unfortunately, even that is an unreliable warning. Today's Internet users don't usually call when they have a problem and even if they did, they can only report that something is wrong, they can't tell you the cause of the problem." If customer complaints are not a solid indicator that it is time to scale up your e-commerce site, then what is? Internal Reads on Red Most red flags are internal, Sandeep Walia, president of Ignify, told the E-Commerce Times. "If you find you are hiring more people to enter orders into its systems; entering the same data multiple times instead of information flowing through automatically across all relevant systems; or, you are manually charging credit cards instead of automatically charging when making a shipment, it's time to scale up your e-commerce capabilities," he says. However, waiting for red flags to appear may leave e-tailers a day late and more than a dollar short. "E-commerce companies need a way to detect end-user performance problems as they happen and correlate those to specific issues within their production infrastructure," advises Wong. "Without this insight, even the most popular sites risk losing business to competitors who are only a click or two away." "The trick to reducing problems is in measuring real-user response time from the browser and collecting key metrics through the system to find only those components that really need work," adds Wong. Laser-precise measures would seem to be the best course in protecting Internet profits, but where does one begin? For further reading of this article go to: http://www.ecommercetimes.com/story/58736.html Website of the Month       "Beanbasket seamlessly integrates with OrderMotion. This integration results in realtime order transmission as well as our sites content updating as product data changes in OrderMotion. Beanbasket's core features such as autoship and related product offerings have greatly increased our sales conversions and lifetime customer value. Some other important reason's we chose to partner with Beanbasket are their reliable hosting, friendly  and courteous support, as well as the fact that they are a SEO friendly site." -Robert Jensen EnutraMart   SEO Tips of the Month     1.)  For a very reasonable price, you can purchase the top 20,000 busiest keywords from Wordtracker all within a single report. 2.)  Use Wordtracker to spot new keyword topics that relate to your industry. Observing higher KEI values will help you find phrases that are busy yet not too competitive. These phrases can often be ranked easily with only mild basic optimization.    Tips from: Emily Leach Search Engine Academy Southwest     Beanbasket Tips of the Month Use Role and Permission Management Did you know that you can setup specific roles and permissions with a specific username and password within the Beanbasket Administrator? When logged into the Beanbasket Administrator, select "Security" and the click "User Management". Click the "Add New User" button. Next, fill in the applicable fields, then click the "add User" button. For example, if you wanted to assign an individual to handle product setup but did not want that individual to have access to any order information or reporting, you would define a user name and password for the individual and set "Product Access" to "Yes". When this user logs in, they will only be able to see anything related to product setup and nothing else. Roles can be established for: Administrator - New user will have full access. Order Access - Can see order information only. Product Access - Can only see information related to product setup and maintenance. Reporting Access - Can only run reports defined within the system.