MightyMerchant eCommerce Blog

Here at MightyMerchant, we work directly with a great cross-section of business owners in many different industries, developing new ecommerce websites and retrofitting ecommerce sites developed by other web designers that lacked good navigability and usability features. Our clients call us and email us every day with questions about how to improve a feature on their site or integrate their site with a helpful third-party application. They share their customers’ comments with us, and tell us things they like and don’t like about how their sites are set up. We listen to each comment and request, and use that to improve our ecommerce platform wherever we can.

I’ve talked to our staff and compiled their best advice for our clients, based on the needs they meet for other clients every day.

Here are some tips from our staff to help you get the most from the MightyMerchant eCommerce platform, and maximize your business in general for a prosperous 2008.

Staci Schipporeit, co-owner and developer of the MightyMerchant eComerce software:

“I’d like to advise ecommerce customers to use QuickBooks Pro for bookkeeping and save time by downloading orders from their website to QuickBooks. We use QuickBooks for all of our business bookkeeping and I think it’s a rather amazing product.”

Michael Stearns, CTO and co-owner of MightyMerchant:

“Update your website home page on a regular basis. Whether you want to post news, present featured products, share your homespun philosophy, or emphasize seasonal themes, you will reinforce the relevance of your website and catch the attention of customers if you regularly update your information. You can reinforce the timeliness of your content by posting dates when you make updates.”

Kathleen, our web developer:

“My advice relates to product images. Oftentimes, customers upload a product image with whatever default filename their digital camera happens to give the image. They are missing an opportunity to take advantage of potential SEO (search engine optimization) benefits by renaming their file something relevant to the product itself. Google’s recent algorithm change gives more consideration to images and other media.”

Jeanie, our Operations Manager:

“Keep adding features to your site. As your site grows, customers start asking for new or different things, like, “It would be great to have an account and not have to type in my address each time I come back,” or you want to try new marketing strategies, like online coupons. Explore ways to keep your site fresh and improving what it offers the customer.”

Kathy, our Lead Designer:

“When categorizing items in the Site Manager, keep in mind that just as no two customers are going to walk through a department store in exactly the same way, no two online customers are going to navigate your website in exactly the same way, so including your products in multiple categories increases the likelihood that a customer will see a particular product. For example, you may want to show a book in an author category and a genre category. MightyMerchant provides two ways for you to show products in multiple categories.”

With one click in the Site Manager, you can check the option inviting you to “Click here to show this item in additional categories.” That will bring up a list of the categories set up in your Site Manager (if you are on an older version of the Site Manager, the list is always shown), where you can check off additional categories the item is to be included in.

The other method is an often overlooked feature in the Site Manager. “Categorize items” allows you to quickly categorize multiple items into a category. Use the “I want to…” drop-down menu located to the right of the category and choose “I want to categorize items.” A list of your products will be shown and you can just check off all products that you want to include in the category. Since most sites will have many products, there will normally be multiple pages of items to click through. Make sure to save your work in between pages! This method works especially well if you’re setting up a new category.

And finally, advice from Vanessa–that’s me–Internet Marketing Specialist

“Recognize that the methods and means of marketing have changed drastically over the past few years. You no longer have to pay a public relations firm thousands of dollars a year to troll your company name in front of a handful of journalists to get mentioned in a few newspapers or magazines. You can reach the media, your buyers, and a global audience yourself, directly. Consider adding blogging, forums, multimedia or podcasting to your business toolbox this year. If you’re not quite ready to start using these tools yourself, at least vow to educate yourself on these new media forms and check out some examples of each. When you’re ready to grow your business by reaching the customer directly, these tools will be familiar.”

We at MightyMerchant wish you a prosperous 2008!

Posted on January 22nd, 2008 by Vanessa
Filed under: SEO and Site Optimization