Ground Breaking Automated Search Engine Optimization: Intelligent SEO™ by GoECart

Recognizing the importance of search engine traffic for online retailers, GoECart has made the “search engine friendliness” of its software a major focus over the past several years. Due to the nature of search engine optimization (SEO) requirements for web pages, the process of optimizing web page content and meta tags has been largely time consuming and cumbersome for web retailers—until now. GoECart is the only ecommerce solution to feature a revolutionary search-engine-friendly software architecture PLUS our ground-breaking Intelligent SEO™ capability. Intelligent SEO can be leveraged by the merchant to automatically optimize web pages in the storefront for higher rankings in major search engines like Google™, Yahoo!®, and Microsoft® Bing™.

How do I optimize my pages with Intelligent SEO™?

You simply click a button in GoECart’s familiar Administration Panel and wait for GoECart to do the work. Intelligent SEO™ first scans the product name, description, and other key fields on your product pages. It then automatically compiles a keyword list based on this data. The site administrator can then intelligently use these keywords to auto populate all META tag fields, the title tag field, product name, search terms and your custom search engine friendly URL field. If you want to add additional keywords to the auto generated list you can do so using the Google Keyword Research and Keyword Discovery APIs built right into the interface.

Following is a break-down of the major features and benefits of Intelligent SEO. It’s nothing short of revolutionary!

• Faster and Deeper Indexing
• Intelligent SEO provides the capability to automatically generate sitemaps, listing all the URLs in your site in a format compatible with Google, Yahoo!, and Bing in a single click. This will help in getting all of the pages on your site indexed in the world’s leading search engines and reduce the time it takes to get your web site listed.
• Intelligent SEO will auto-generate your breadcrumb trail navigation. This will help guide search engine crawlers and spiders through all of the pages in your site and increase the number of internal links in your site, a key factor for effective SEO.
• Automated Optimization
• Intelligent SEO™ auto populates all META tag fields, the TITLE tag field, product name, search terms and your custom search engine friendly URL field for every product. You can refine tags easily using GoECart’s built-in editors.
• Advanced Keyword Research
• Intelligent SEO enables you to leverage the power of advanced keyword research and search term suggestion tools from Google and Keyword Discovery (Trellian) right within GoECart Administration Panel. In addition to manual research Intelligent SEO™ automatically scans the product name, description and other fields in your product pages and compiles a keyword list based on this data.

GoECart’s Search Engine Friendly Architecture

We’ve designed our ecommerce architecture from the ground up to be super friendly to search engine spiders and crawlers.. This means that, by design, GoECart will help your online store set better search engine indexing and positioning. GoEart’s SEO-friendly attributes include:

• Automatically configured robots.txt file
• Clean Code: No irrelevant code to distract the search engine crawlers or penalize your site from getting listed
• Social bookmarking integration —to help increase the number of links to your storefront — via AddThis, ShareThis, AddToAny or other similar widgets
• Dedicated IP address for each storefront
• Fast Servers to enable both easy crawling by the search engine spiders and higher rankings
• Heading tags for all the headings on each page
• Search engine friendly breadcrumb navigation
• Search engine friendly URLs for all pages
• Facility to add content rich pages through Custom Pages feature
• No spider traps or un-indexable pages
• Ability to easily add a blog to your storefront – providing your site with unique content (relevant to SEO best practices)
• Product Reviews and Ratings can be leveraged to add user generated content to your pages. This can boost the rankings of your product because many search engines give unique content preferential treatment.

If you were to spend 15 minutes per page doing basic optimization to 100 pages, you would need to spend 25 hours, just to optimize a small part of your storefront! GoECart's Intelligent SEO™ can save you and your team hundreds of hours over the course of a year. We invite you to contact your GoECart account representative today to get more information about how to take advantage of GoECart’s exciting new Intelligent SEO™ capability.

Ground Breaking Automated Search Engine Optimization: Intelligent SEO™ by GoECart

Create an In-Store User Experience Using GoECart’s Adobe® Scene7® Integration

We have all heard the phrase ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’ and it is well established that if you add images to your product pages, your conversion rate will significantly increase. However, today’s savvier online merchants are adding rich media to their sites— to both differentiate themselves from their competitors AND to present their products more effectively to site visitors.

In order to provide GoECart merchants with the best-in-class solution for visual merchandising, we haves partnered with the leader in online rich media, Adobe® Scene7®. Integration with Scene7 enables our online retailers to provide a more rich, immersive online experience that includes dynamic imaging, high-definition video streaming, online catalogs, , targeted email & print, dynamic asset management, and web-to-print capabilities.

Using Scene7 integration with GoECart, you can cost-effectively add zoom and colorizing capabilities to your entire site, even across tens of thousands of products. You also get dynamic image re-sizing capabilities to help streamline internal web production processes.

Dynamic Imaging

For online shoppers, ‘zooming in’ on product images is the equivalent of a physical store shopper picking up an item to take a closer look. You can accomplish a very similar scenario on your website by adding zoom targets to your product's images and incorporating text tips as well. Online shoppers want to be provided with as much visual information in as large a viewing format as possible—including interactive zoom that enables shoppers to dynamically pan and zoom to deeper levels of details. Offering fly-over, click-driven browsing, combined with full-screen interactive zoom is the ideal best practice. Key features:

• Rather than manually creating several images­—for example, a thumbnail and an enlarged-view image—you can take a single master image, and have all modified images generated as you request them, on the fly.
• Easily scale rich media viewing across entire product line using a dynamic fully-configurable, integrated viewer – either embedded or in a pop-up.
• Dynamic content sizing, editing, formatting and rich media viewing of content across all Web pages:
• Single asset type viewers including single image zoom, image set zoom (alternative images and color ways), rollover driven zoom, 360-degree spin.
• Mixed media viewing with combinations of asset types (images, videos, SWFs, spin, audio, etc.)
• Easily configurable image hotspots for data-driven, formatted rollover panels with both text and image content for all eCatalog viewers
• Integrate to any webpage using a simple data-driven URL.

Online Video

The single most effective method of selling products online is through video. Online video is the next best thing to being there— it comes as close as possible to bringing the retail shopping experience online. In a brick-and-mortar store setting, if a customer wants more information on a product, they ask a sales associate. Video is the online equivalent of an in-store sales associate; you can upload product demonstrations, point out key features, and basically help guide the shopping experience.

Scene7’s eVideo Streaming is an end-to-end, hosted web video publishing and streaming service that enables anyone to easily upload final videos in any format. You can convert to Flash format; manage, edit, create hot spots and video templates; and publish and stream into configurable video viewers—simplifying overall video workflows. Video sets and new 'clickable video hotspots' can augment the customer-facing experience—upping the time consumers spend online and consequently spiking conversion.

Key features:

• Ability to upload all popular video and audio file formats.
• Capability to add 'clickable' video hotspots to any Recut clip/caption/graphic to provide call-to-action links to purchase or for more relevant information.
• A publishing model that is ideal for non-technical video publishers and eliminates multiple third-party solutions for same video workflow.
• Standardizes on Flash for delivery to any channel.

Centralized interface

Scene7 features a centralized interface where you upload and store all your media files online in one, central password-protected interface. You can even give your vendors or distributors access so they can upload and download media directly.

GoECart merchants have seen both increased conversion rates and reductions in product returns through rich media integration. As an added bonus, GoECart merchants can integrate your rich media using the GoECart Scene7 integration into your Social Media Sites, Email Campaigns, YouTube Channels, and other digital assets your company has on the web. GoECart version 8.0 was designed to help merchants to Sell more™ on the web and compete in ecommerce markets that are rapidly maturing. We invite you to contact your GoECart account representative to get more information on how to take advantage of GoECart’s Scene7 integration.

Create an In-Store User Experience Using GoECart’s Adobe® Scene7® Integration

Leveraging the Power of Customer Reviews to Drive Traffic and Sales

A company’s reputation can make or break it. Whether you run an online or offline business, managing your brand’s reputation is a core business principle that needs focus and attention. As an ecommerce merchant, did you know you can leverage the power of “reviews” to help manage your brand? According to Kudzu.com, a whopping 86% of consumers read online business reviews before making purchasing decisions. By putting a focus on managing reviews you can not only help your reputation, you can also drive more sales!
Understand the Impact Of Positive Reviews

Let’s start discussing the impact of positive reviews with the following scenario. You moved to a new town and want to find a new dentist. You go to Google and search for ‘dentists in Denver, CO’. Take a look at the screen shot below. Which of the following are you going to call?


You are most likely going to click on the listing with 78 reviews, read through them, and then click on the listing with 73 reviews, and read through those. It is also very likely that one of those two dentists will be getting your business as you have seen validation from many of their customers that they are indeed 5 star dentists.

Now think about the impact that positive online reviews can have on your ecommerce business. As stated above, 86% of consumers read online business reviews before making purchasing decisions.

Emphasize the Positive?

When choosing the online review sites you want your existing customers to use, start with the ones seen by the most potential customers. When someone searches for your company name online, chances are they will do so on Google, Yahoo, or Bing. When you search for a company on each of these search engines the very first listing usually contains a map and your business information. With these listings being seen by so many of your potential customers, this is precisely where you need to start getting customers to post their reviews! Then you need them to post reviews on popular review sites which rank highly for your company name. The most popular review sites are Yelp, CitySearch, InsiderPages, MerchantCircle and RatePoint.

Now let’s discuss how you can solicit positive reviews and comments on these listings. According to Jupiter Research, 42% of customers provided feedback only after being prompted by a retailer to do so. An effective way to get your customers to post reviews on these sites is to email your customers directly and ask them. This should be done after they have received their order. Be sure to thank them for their order, and then request that they leave a review of your company on the most relevant sites mentioned above. You might also consider creating three different emails each of which contain links to your business listings on three of the above review sites. You could then rotate them evenly so that you are building up positive reviews on all of the most popular review sites.

Prevent and Remedy Negative Reviews

According to research by Convergys Corp, one negative review can cost a company up to 30 customers. If the review appears at the top of the list when a potential client Google’s your company name, that number can increase greatly.

Following are a few ways you prevent negative reviews from hurting your company’s online reputation:

• Set up an account with a third-party complaint site such as GetSatisfaction, RatePoint or Merchant Circle. These three companies offer review solutions where you can control which reviews, whether positive or negative, are displayed publicly.
• Launch an online review solicitation campaign as we discussed above.
• Hire a Search Engine Reputation Management company to help you manage your company’s online reputation.

If you have existing negative reviews there are a number of things you can do to correct them. Most review sites allow you to respond to the review either publicly or privately. Some even allow you to delete any reviews you don’t want shown. You can hide the review by getting your satisfied customers to post reviews on the same site, or you can use a search engine reputation management company to suppress the negative listing entirely. You may be tempted to post fake positive reviews online, especially when you see a negative review about your company; however, doing so is both illegal and consumers generally see right through it. Not to mention that Yelp, CitySearch and Insiderpages have intelligent review algorithms in place that can usually identify “astroturfing” reviews by merchants and will automatically remove them.

Dealing with online customer reviews can be quite frustrating at times. However, it is now more important than ever to ensure that your company implements a plan on managing your online reputation. The bottom line is that in order to succeed on the web today, merchants need an effective strategy for dealing with customer reviews. If you don’t control what people read about you online, you risk tarnishing your company’s reputation which is certain to impact your bottom line.

Leveraging the Power of Customer Reviews to Drive Traffic and Sales

Google’s Latest Update Leaves Online Retailers Scrambling

In early May, Google™ made a major algorithm update to its search engine with the goal of making ‘long-tailed’ results—phrases that contain three or more keywords—more useful. For example, a Google search for ‘Widget Model 554’ is a long-tailed search. Unfortunately, the change has adversely impacted online retailer's standings in the search giant’s results pages. Consequently, there has been a great deal of outrage over this algorithmic update particularly from online retailers that have seen their traffic and online revenues drop sharply.

Vanessa Fox, a former Google employee, had this to say: “This change seems to have primarily impacted very large sites with “item” pages that don’t have many individual links into them. These pages might be several clicks from the home page and may not have substantial unique and value-added content on them.” Many ecommerce sites have this structure.

Matt Cutts, ofGoogle’s Web Spam team, said that site owners who saw their traffic drop need to keep adding great content and make sure people see your site as an authority.

With thousands of online retailers seeing fewer search engine rankings for their product pages, many retailers are wondering what can be done to regain these positions and recapture lost revenues.

Optimize Product Pages

Online retailers often face common problems when trying to get their product pages to rank well in the search engines. One key challenge is with images and content that are exactly like those provided by the manufacturer. One of the core reasons Google made this algorithmic update is to prevent this type of duplicate content from being indexed. For example, when you search for ‘Widget Model 554’ and every search result yields the exact same content from multiple retail sites, there is little value to the online shopper. Since using manufacturer-supplied catalog content is a standard practice amongst merchants for many reasons; it could take months to manually rewrite each product description for potentially thousands of catalog pages. However, by not taking the time to add value to the content, your search results will suffer. So how can these challenges be addressed? Start with proper page optimization:

• Write unique keyword-rich TITLE tags for every product.
• Ensure your product page URLs are search engine friendly and contain the product name.
• Rewrite the product information provided to you by the manufacturer; for example, further expand on the products features and/benefits.
• Allow your customers to write reviews on the products they purchase from you. Let your customers create unique content for you on each product page!
• Add a unique and detailed expert reviews to each of your popular products.

Adding value to your product pages can be a very time consuming task; however, taking the time to do it right will result in higher search engine rankings and more satisfied customers.

Employ an Effective Link Building Strategy

Google stated that they will factor in links from other sites even more heavily as a key area in the algorithm update. Since product pages, due to their nature, generally don’t have many links from other sites to them, online retailers need to build back links to these pages This involves developing new content containing the embedded links to your pages making sure the content gets posted to other sites across the web. For example, you can create the following types of content containing the links back to your site:

• Regularly scheduled press releases and announcements about new products
• Articles about your products, such as what differentiates them from competing products or general overview articles
• Squidoo™, Google Knol™, or a HubPages™ pages about each of the brands or products you carry.

You can then send this content to bloggers, article distribution sites, trade associations or post them on your company blog. You can also try some of these additional link building strategies:

• If you have a large customer base, consider developing a widget or badge customers can put on their blog or site which features a product wish list or registry. Go to your most popular competitor sites and see where they are acquiring their back links from. There may be specialty sites in your niche you can leverage.

There are many more ways you can generate quality links to your site’s category and product pages, just spend some time going over the sites within your vertical, and you will begin generating lists of potential sources.

Indeed, keeping up with Google’s latest algorithmic updates can be overwhelming for many online merchants. To help avoid your online store dropping off in the search results, the general rule of thumb is to develop unique, valuable site content. In doing so, we can stop chasing every algorithmic update and begin focusing on our core business and its customers. But first you must make sure both visitors and the search engines see your site as an authority within your vertical.

Google’s Latest Update Leaves Online Retailers Scrambling

GoECart Nominated for 2010 Connecticut Quality Improvement Award

Last week, GoECart submitted its application for the 15th annual Connecticut Quality Improvement Award competition.

From the CQIA's website: "The Connecticut Quality Improvement Award, Inc., America's first state-level quality award, was founded in 1987 utilizing the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award for Performance Excellence criteria in an effort to advance innovative programs that improve quality, performance, and marketplace competitiveness."

Last year and in previous years, GoECart has won CQIA's coveted Innovation Prize. The CQIA prize is a great prize for outstanding innovation leadership in Connecticut. For those of you who are unaware, GoECart's headquarters are strategically located in downtown Bridgeport, CT right across the train and bus stations. This year, we have submitted a nomination application highlighting the innovative new features in GoECart 8.1 Ecommerce Platform. Notable new features include:

• An updated discount and promotion engine that enables online retailers to offer highly customizable and focused discounts. Some examples of discounts include: buy one product and get a second product at half off, get free shoes with purchase of a dress, receive 10% off all products in Toys category only, get free ground shipping on orders over $50, and many others


• Enhanced supply chain automation functionality via multi-vendor drop ship module enhancements. Updates include the ability to source and manage products from multiple vendors at the SKU level, intelligent routing of orders based on customer proximity, and improved vendor self-service and automation


• Amazing rich media capabilities through its advanced integration with Adobe® Scene7


• An enhanced rich transactional email module


• Robust and advanced integration has been added for FedEx® shipping services


• Improved integration with third party solutions that include PayPal® payment services, Avalara® sales tax solutions, and Omniture® web analytics.

GoECart regularly receives awards for product innovation and ecommerce leadership, which are a testiment to the tireless work of our team and their dedication to continuously updating the GoECart software platform and advancing ecommerce. For example, GoECart is also a four-time finalist in the prestigious annual CODiE Awards completion for "Best Ecommerce Solution" and expects to be nominated again this year

We will be sure to keep you posted on the results of the application and on the status of others awards, news and events via this blog. Check back often for updates!

GoECart Nominated for 2010 Connecticut Quality Improvement Award

GoECart CEO Talks About Important Trends for Online Businesses in Radio Interview

GoECart’s CEO Manish Chowdhary recently sat down with Gregory Skidmore and David Lehn -- co-hosts of Greenwich Entrepreneurs Talk Show and WGCH radio program -- to discuss current trends in ecommerce and online retail. Mr. Chowdhary spoke about how GoECart helps growing small businesses and middle market companies to break through "growth choke points" and drive online sales in today’s competitive ecommerce climate.

To listen to the full interview, click here.

In speaking about important trends for online businesses, Chowdhary pointed to the importance of cloud computing, where shared resources, software and information are provided to computers and other devices on-demand, like a public utility. As an on-demand ecommerce platform provider, GoECart is at the center of the cloud computing storm, providing merchants with the seamless interconnected set of the applications on demand that they need to be successful on the web. These include:

• Affiliate Marketing and CRM
  
• Comparison Shopping
  
• Customer Service
  
• Ecommerce Marketplace
  
• Financial applications
  
• Fulfillment and Shipping
  
• Networking and Infrastructure
  
• Internet Marketing and Advertising
  
• Payment Solutions
  
• Rich Media
  
• Sales Tax Management & Compliance
  
• Security and Compliance
  
• Web Monitoring and Analytics
  
• Website Testing and Optimization
  

Regarding GoECart’s ability to adapt to the staggering pace of change in ecommerce, Chowdhary said, "We have to adapt to any shifts that are happening the internet space. Ultimately, our clients are successful when people buy online from one of the stores that we power. "We have to keep an eye on everything. It is our responsibility to be forward thinking, to be progressive, keeping our clients on that innovative edge but being realistic about what trends are meaningful what trends should we follow and what are fads we should avoid. Because at the end of the day, it's about generating revenue and profit."

Manish Chowdhary is CEO of GoECart and the visionary behind GoECart’s best-in-class software as a service (SaaS) ecommerce platform designed to help merchants Sell more™ on the web. He is regularly quoted in the media on topics concerning ecommerce and is a much sought after speaker for industry tradeshows and events.

Gregory Skidmore is the President of Belray Asset Management, which uses the asset allocation techniques of university endowments and pension funds to focus on serving their clients' best interests. This institutional investment process seeks to: reduce conflicts of interest, lower fees, improve communication, decrease volatility, fund future needs, and increase predictability of returns.

David Lehn is a Managing Director at Withers Bergman, which has been advising individuals, companies, and charities for over a hundred years. They are an international commercial law firm with offices in London, Milan, Geneva, New Haven, New York and Greenwich.

GoECart CEO Talks About Important Trends for Online Businesses in Radio Interview