Learn everything you need to know about setting up a product in AspDotNetStorefront with Scott’s new training video:  Products in Depth

Having trouble figuring out how to navigate the AspDotNetStorefront admin backend? Check out the rest of Scott’s instructional training videos to get introduced to some of the cart’s more basic administrative features.

• Adding A Product
• Organizing Products
• Managing Topics Part 1
• Managing Topics Part 2
• Adding An Admin User
• AppConfig Parameters

Is there something you’d be interested in learning more about in a video tutorial? Just let us know.

                          

There is so much more to Google Apps than a branded email solution. Once you start looking into everything the entire free suite can do, you will be just as amazed as I was.

Email

Google Apps gives you a stable and branded email solution that complements your website.  It’s your own email, addressed to your domain, and stays with you for as long as you own your domain. But what about my Outlook? Don’t worry, you can still use Outlook (and other email clients) on your desktop, and you can also access your email from anywhere using a web browser – on your laptop, home computer, and even handheld mobile devices.

Google Apps email is based on Google’s already popular Gmail, which gives you a scalable, world class email system without the need to invest in additional hardware, software, and technical support resources. Gmail couples the concept of labels with Google’s powerful search engine that makes creating folders and sorting through hundreds of emails a thing of the past. Google provides a massive, ever-increasing storage capacity (currently over 7400 MB), which makes saving and archiving all your critical email a goal you can reach.

And that’s just the email!

Google Apps also provides a suite of applications using the “software as a service” concept, which are designed to increase your productivity, mobility and ability to collaborate. Included in your Google Apps account is the Calendar, Google Docs, Google Groups, and Google Sites, each with your own domain branded web address, or URL.

Calendar

Google Calendar is competitive with Outlook and other group aware calendar packages. It is customizable, web and mobile accessible, and designed with collaboration and group sharing capabilities. Here are just some of the things you can do with Google Calendar:

• Schedule and manage appointments
• Overlay multiple calendars to see when people are available. Google Calendar can send invitations and manage RSVPs.
• Google Calendar works with Gmail and can easily be integrated into most desktop email clients.
• Share project calendars
• Calendars can be shared company-wide or with select co-workers. A range of sharing permission controls help maintain security and privacy.
• Access with your mobile device – View and edit event details, add new events, and invite guests on mobile devices like the BlackBerry and iPhone. Even receive calendar notifications via SMS.
• Publish calendars – Publicize external company events by publishing a calendar to make it searchable in the Google Calendar gallery. Calendars are easily embedded into web pages.
• Manage meetings online with Google Calendar

Google Groups

Google Groups allows you to create and manage multiple distribution lists for email, and also provides a way to organize sharing and permissions for access to calendars, Google Docs, and Google Sites. Here are some basic facts about Google Groups:

• Groups are fast and easy to setup
• Easily managed without the need for additional IT support
• Easy for employees to share docs, calendars, sites, shared folders, and videos with groups instead of individual employees. You have complete control over access through managing the members of the group
• Group discussions are archived by default and easily searched, allowing for retrieval and compliance with records policies
• Groups act as a centralized communications point with the ability to receive and send replies on behalf a group

Google Docs

Google Docs are a web-based document collaboration application, combining documents, spreadsheets and presentations into shareable, group accessible locations that allow users to edit the same file, ensuring that you always have the latest version. You can create documents, spreadsheets and presentations right there online, or upload and edit documents. Here are some things you can do with Google Docs:

• Upload and convert Word documents, OpenOffice, RTF, HTML, text (.txt), Open Office (.odt), and StarOffice Writer (.sxw) files (or create documents from scratch)
• Easily format your documents, spell-check them, etc.
• Invite others by email to edit or view your documents and edit documents online
• View your documents’ revision history and roll back to any version
• Publish documents online to the world, as web pages or post documents to your blog or email your documents out as attachments
• Download documents to your desktop as Word, OpenOffice, RTF, PDF, HTML or zip

Google Docs gives you more functionality and flexibility with your spreadsheets and presentations, too. Here are some things you can do with spreadsheets:

• Import and convert .xls, .csv, .txt and .ods formatted data
• Export .xls, .csv, .txt and .ods formatted data and PDF and HTML files
• Use formatting and formula editing so you can calculate results and make your data look the way you want it
• Chat in real time with others who are editing your spreadsheet
• Embed a spreadsheet, or individual sheets of your spreadsheet, in your blog or website

And your presentations:

• Share and edit presentations with your friends and coworkers
• Import and convert existing presentations in .ppt and .pps file types
• Download your presentations as a PDF, a PPT, or a TXT file
• Easily edit your presentations
• Insert images and videos, and format your slides to fit your preferences
• Allow real-time viewing of presentations, online, from separate remote locations
• Publish and embed your presentations in a website, allowing access to a wide audience.

Google Sites

Google gives you an easy way to create a website. Do you need a company intranet page? How about setting a Team Project Portfolio? Have you thought about putting up employee profile pages, but didn’t think you could do it on your own. Google Sites can do all that and more. Here are some quick facts:

• You can create a new page for your Google Site with just a single click
• No HTML required – creating a Google Site is as easy as editing a document, which means there’s no markup language or fancy code for you to learn
• Get started quickly and easily with website templates. You can choose from an ever growing list of page types — web page, announcements, file cabinet, dashboard and list — to help you get started with your Google Sites pages
• Use the file cabinet to upload files and documents up to 10MB in size. Each Google Apps Standard account receives at least 10GB of storage in Google Sites
• Google Sites are integrated with other Google products, so you can insert videos, docs, spreadsheets, presentations, photo slide shows, and calendars directly onto your Google Sites pages
• Collaboration allows you to set permissions and designate owners, viewers and collaborators (meaning they can edit pages) for your site. And you can make your Google Sites available to just a few people, only your company, or the entire world

Google Apps Mobile

Google Apps is not just for your desktop. You can setup and access all your Google Apps email, sites, groups and documents right from your Smartphone. Here are just some of the things you can do with Google Apps and your Smartphone:

• Google Mobile App – download to your Smartphone to search fast
• Mail – access to your email, calendar, sites and docs, no matter where you are
• Use your Google Calendar with no syncing necessary. Set up mobile phone notifications
• View your Google documents, spreadsheets, and presentations, from anywhere and at any time
• Google Tasks keeps your to do list with you wherever you go

All of this and more come with the free Google Apps Standard account, proving that Google Apps is so much more than just “email”. For more information on how Google Apps can work for you, or to or have Vortx setup your own Google Apps migration, go here: http://www.vortx.com/p-58-google-apps-migration-service.aspx.

                          

A handy yet often unused feature of AspDotNetStorefront is the product specs pop-up.

You can add additional product information to your product page by using the spec title and spec call fields found on the options tab of the product editing screen in the AspDotNetStorefront admin.

There are many different ways you could use product specs. One of the most common ways of using it would be for a product size chart.

To add a size chart (or any other) pop-up to your product page:

1. Add the text that you want to appear on the link to the spec title field.
2. Add the url of the page that you want to display to the spec call field.
3. Save the product.

That’s all there is to it. You will find that you don’t have a lot of control over the behavior or size of the pop-up, but if all you need is a simple pop up and you’re not too worried about what size it is this may be a good solution for you.

                          

We all know getting inbound links is the key to increasing your rank in Google.  But, what is it about inbound links that makes them so valuable to search engines?  Why does Google put so much stock in inbound links?  Is one inbound link as good as another?

In the broadest sense, Google considers a link from one site to another a vote.  If site A links to site B, Google considers site A proclaiming to the world that site B has something note-worthy going on.  But, not all links are considered equal and that’s where some insider info comes in handy.

The ‘What and How” of inbound links

As Google goes around the Internet indexing sites and their links it develop a chart, or social graph, of the relationships between between the sites.  A sites with more links than another site is  considered to be more note-worthy and Google assigns the site numbers that represent the number of inbound links, and the value of those links. But, how does Google decide that one link is more valuable than another?

A social graph illustrating inbound links between sites. via Wikipedia

If Site A is linked to by more sites than the average site, Google considers a link from Site A more valuable than average. This leads to world where a link from CNN.com and Wikipedia is more influence than JoeNobodysFishandPoolSupply.com.

In addition, Google trusts that highly linked sites like CNN or Wikipedia produce good content and have strong editorial practices in place that insure high-quality outbound links. Linking and being linked to by trusted sites will help raise your ranking for important keywords.

The ‘Why’ of inbound links

So why does Google use inbound links?  Mainly, because site owners have less control over them.

The first search engines ranked sites solely on on-page and server information.  If there was a high density of specific keywords, the site was ranked high for that keyword.  Sometimes these search engines would check to see when the site’s domain registration would expire, assuming that if someone was working on something important they’d register the domain for a very long time.

However, these tactics were very easily tricked.  Sites started stuffing keywords everywhere they could often putting white text against a white background so that users wouldn’t see it but where search engines could still read it.  This technique would artificially inflate the relative density of the keyword on the page.

By tracking inbound links, the other sites on the Web are given a say in who gets ranked where.  It’s not just enough to cram your pages full of keywords (in fact, it’s now frowned upon), people need to find your site useful enough to recommend to their visitors.

                          

“We’ll need your IP address to set up DNS, the SSL will be installed after we have RDC access. Then we’ll send you FTP details and a full URL to your new site.”

Have you ever transferred your hosting account to another provider and heard something like that? So what does all that mean? You can Google the acronyms all day long, but you’ll end up buried in pages of technical documentation littered with even more acronyms you’ll have to search for.

Below we’ve compiled some commonly used acronyms and terms and provided some simple definitions that might help you understand how this all works.

ISP
Your ISP is your Internet Service Provider, and might be Qwest, Charter, Comcast, Clearwire, etc. An ISP has one simple function – to provide you with access to the internet. Some ISP’s will offer additional services, such as email hosting or data storage, but their primary job is to connect up their customers to the internet. Your ISP will assign you an IP address after your account has been set up. This will designate your location on the internet.
More about ISP on Wikipedia

HTTP
HTTP stands for HyperText Transfer Protocol. This is used at the beginning of a URL placed in a web browser. Sometimes you’ll see HTTPS in front of your URL, this means the site is using an SSL certificate, and any data transmitted over the internet using HTTPS in the beginning of the URL will be secure. In AspDotNetStorefront, when your SSL certificate is installed and configured correctly, the site will automatically switch over to HTTPS on any page that requests a password, credit card number, or other sensitive information.
More about HTTP on Wikipedia

URL
URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator, and doesn’t really mean what it sounds like. A URL is simply the address that your website is hosted at along with any other bells and whistles that come along for the ride. Sometimes your website address will have some characters or words after the actual domain name.
More about URL on Wikipedia

Subdomain
A Subdomain is a domain name with another word in front of it replacing the ‘www’. For example, www.vortx.com is a domain name, blog.vortx.com is a subdomain. Quite often, separate parts of a site are hosted on a subdomain. This could be for blogs, forums, manuals, etc.
More about subdomains on Wikipedia

IP
IP stands for Internet Protocol. An IP address is a numeric location assigned by your ISP (Internet Service Provider) that designates your computer’s location on the internet. If you are online and browsing the web, you will have an IP address. If you’re curious to see what your IP address is, go to http://whatismyip.com.

Just as your computer is assigned an IP address, your website will also be assigned an IP address to designate its location on the internet. If you are using shared hosting and you are not assigned a dedicated IP, your website will be sharing an IP address with one or more other websites. If your site requires an SSL (Secure Sockets Layer – see below) Certificate, you will need a dedicated IP address which will not be shared with any other websites.
More about IP on Wikipedia

DNS
DNS stands for Domain Name System and is a fancy way of translating domain names to IP addresses. So you’ve got a domain name that you want your new website to use. You’ve just set up hosting, and have been assigned an IP address. You can view the site in a browser using that IP address, but that number isn’t something you want to put on your business card. That’s where DNS comes in. DNS holds records which tell a domain name like www.vortx.com what IP address it belongs to. If you are hosting a website, and that website has a URL, then you’ve got a DNS record telling that address what IP address it belongs to. DNS records also manage “MX” records which help route email to the correct place.
More about DNS on Wikipedia
More about MX Records

SSL
An SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) Certificate is needed on any site which will ask visitors for any sort of sensitive information. If you’re running an e-commerce site, an SSL Certificate is mandatory. Most payment gateways require that an SSL is installed, or they will not accept payment. An SSL Certificate is a digital certificate that authenticates the identity of a website and encrypts that sensitive information before transmitting it throughout the site.

There are many different types of SSL Certificates out there, some as cheap as $20, others can cost thousands. The amount you should spend on an SSL certificate depends on the level of validation you would like your visitors to see, and the amount of traffic you’ll get. If you’re just starting out in e-commerce, we recommend a low-end SSL Certificate. If you’re running an enterprise application or you know you’ll have hundreds or thousands of visitors every day, you may want to invest in an Extended Validation certificate.

More and more online shoppers are looking for the little padlock icon, or a green address bar to show them that your site is secure. The more you pay for an SSL Certificate, the more you can show off your site’s security. Extended Validation certificates can turn the address bar green You can also display a site seal on your website that shows visitors that your site is using SSL technology.
More about SSL on Wikipedia

RDC
RDC stands for Remote Desktop Connection. This is used to connect to a computer that you’re not physically in front of. If you have dedicated hosting, you may have RDC access that can be used to connect up to the server so you can see that computers desktop on your screen without having to go to that computer. This is very useful for hosting transfers or for debugging live site errors in the codebase or database.
More about RDC on Wikipedia

FTP
FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol. When you have a hosting account for your website, you’ll likely be given FTP access, which you can use in conjunction with an FTP client (program), such as Filezilla. This will connect you to the directory structure of your website. You’ll have access to view your websites files and make changes to those files. You can also create new directories and upload new files. After a file has been uploaded, you can access it via a browser.
More about FTP on Wikipedia
Download Filezilla

More questions about hosting? Contact Us or read our Vortx Hosting FAQ.

                          

There is quite a lot you can to do customize your store without having to dig into the code yourself. Changing string resources in AspDotNetStorefront is one easy way to customize the appearance of your site for your unique visitors.

Take a look at your category pages. If the AppConfig Parameters DisplayOutOfStockOnProductPages &  DisplayOutOfStockOnEntityPages are set to ‘true’, you will see text below the product on entity and product pages notifying your visitors whether or not that product is in or out of stock.  (Click here to watch a brief video tutorial about setting AppConfig Parameters)

By default this simply says “In Stock”, or “Out of Stock” depending on your inventory levels. By making a simple change to String Resources in your admin site, you can personalize this notification to appeal to your visitors.

To change the way this inventory notification appears on the front of your site, follow the steps below:

1. Log in to your admin site.
2. Go to Content >  String Resource Mgr from the top menu.
3. Search for the text you want to replace using the search function on the left. In this example, we’ll search for the words “in stock.”
4. On the right side of the page, you’ll find your search results. Locate the “In Stock” text in your search results, and click the edit button to change the value. In this example, we’ll change the text to say “We got ‘em”.



5. Click the update button to save your changes.
6. Click the Reset Cache button.

Now go back to your category page and have a look at your new in stock notification text.  Repeat the steps above using the search “Out of stock” to find and change your out of stock notification text.  Remember to Reset Cache after making changes to String Resources or AppConfig parameters.

There are many other places in the front and admin site of AspDotNetStorefront that are available as string resources that you can change. If you come across a bit of text on your site that you’d like to change the wording on, go to String Resource Mgr, and search for the text you’d like to change.

For more info on managing String Resources, see the AspDotNetStorefront manual.

                          

These days, no one would blame you for being confused about the mobile-frenzy that’s going on. Understanding what the new smart phones are capable of is hard and it’s only getting more complicated.

A common misconception is that mobile shoppers are only after certain things. After all, who’s going to shop for office supplies on their mobile? Don’t count your business out; as more data is compiled we are learning that there are no set patterns for smart phone shopping habits.

Here are 6 reasons why a mobile cart should be on your shopping list for 2010:

1. A whopping 81% of smart phone users use them while out shopping; 24% are making purchases via their mobiles. What are they doing? Price comparisons and purchases.
2. Mobile web usage grew worldwide by 148% in 2009.
3. If mobile users increase at the rate we’ve been seeing, within 5 years mobile shopping will overtake desktop shopping.
4. Mobile shoppers are frustrated by non-optimized sites and won’t stay around very long before giving up. 6 to 10 seconds is about the average before moving on.
5. 40% of smart phone shoppers will seek a competitor site for the service or product if the site is too slow or not mobile-friendly.
6. More than 80% of smart phone users would shop more frequently on their mobile devices if performance was as quick and efficient as it is on a desktop.

Consumers use their smart phones to locate stores, get coupons and bargain hunt before purchasing. Online storefronts that don’t provide a mobile-friendly shopping experience may lose customers for good once they are presented with the desktop version and its teeny-tiny images on their mobile phone.

Don’t forget that Google Analytics captures mobile visitor information and will show what their browsing patterns are. If you don’t have it installed or you can’t make sense of the data, let us know.

The world is open for business; don’t lose sales because you don’t offer a mobile shopping cart for your smart phone shoppers!

Check out our Mobile Commerce Platform for AspDotNetStorefront.

                          

I know you’re excited. We just installed Google Analytics on your site and the dream of increased conversion rates glows brightly in your eyes.  You login and… uh-whaaaaa?  What is this jibber-jabber?  All you see is squiggly lines and a page full of numbers and links to more pages full of even more squiggly lines and numbers.

This is a common reaction to the Google Analytics Dashboard. The numbers look intimidating but with a little help, they’ll soon be your best friend.  The first step of being able to release the power of your site’s analytics is to understand the terms used.  After we get you familiar with what the terms mean, we’ll move on to understanding the way they interact with each other.  But that’s for another time.

So, put on a pot of coffee, grab your spectacles and settle in; I’m going to teach you some key definitions that will help you get the most out of Google Analytics.

Common Analytics Terms:

Visits: An interaction between a visitor’s browser and a particular website. A visit automatically ends if a user is inactive for longer than 30 minutes. Visits are also called sessions.

Visitor: An estimation of how many distinct peoples use a site over a given period.  Google Analytics uses cookies to track how many times a distinct visitor has visited a site.

Pageview: Every time a page from your site is loaded in a browser, it’s counted as a pageview.

Pages/Visit: The average number of pageviews divided by the number of visits over a given period of time.

Bounce Rate: The percentage of single-page visits in which the person left your site from the same page they entered on.

Ave. Time on Site: The average duration of a visit over a period of time.

% New Visits: The number of visitors that are new to a site divided by the total number of visitors over a period of time.  Google Analytics uses cookies to track return visitors, so even if someone has been to your site before, but they deleted their cookies, they’ll be counted as a new visitor.

Referring Sites: The URL of an HTML page that refers visitors to a site.

Conversion: A conversion happens whenever a goal page is loaded during a visit.  A goal page can be anything from a purchase confirmation page, to a page that loads after a visitor enters their email address for your newsletter.

Conversion Rate: The number of visits to your site that load a goal page divided by the total number of visits.

After you’re familiar with the terms, start looking at the numbers that are being recorded.  Do they seem high?  Low? What would have to happen in the real world to create the numbers you’re looking at?   Answering these kinds of questions will be the key to starting to increase your site’s conversion rate.

                          

If you Googled “Enter your site title here”, what do you think you would find in the search results? Surprisingly, you get a lot of legitimate e-commerce sites, most of them using AspDotNetStorefront, that just haven’t figured out how to set their site’s meta title. By not making good use of this tag, a lot of store owners are missing out on an opportunity to make it easier for shoppers to find their site.

AspDotNetStorefront makes it very easy to optimize your site for search engines at almost every level. Site-wide meta tags are used on your homepage and when meta tags are not set at the individual page level. They are easily managed through the AppConfigParameters. The three config names are:

• SE_MetaDescription
• SE_MetaKeywords
• SE_MetaTitle

The AppConfig Parameters are located in your sites’s admin backend under Configuration/Advanced. Once there, enter “meta” into the Config Search field in the left column. You’ll then see four editable meta tag values:

(Need help understanding AppConfig Parameters? Watch our video tutorial)

Meta Description
This is a brief explanation of your entire store’s contents and is displayed in search engine results under the clickable page title. The description is important because it is often what visitors read before deciding whether to click on the link. This tag can certainly have an impact on traffic and bounce rates. It should be less than 160 characters and be a concise, keyword-rich and benefit-oriented description.

Meta Keywords
While the meta keyword tag is no longer considered by the search engines when it comes to page ranking, it can be recognized in conjunction with other page elements in determining your site’s relevance to search terms. Misuse of this meta tag is easily detectable by the search engine crawlers and your site can be penalized for keyword stuffing and using keywords that aren’t relevant to your site’s content. In general, keywords should be an accurate reflection of your page’s content, used intelligently throughout the site and not just in meta tags.

The meta keyword tag is useful for alternate spellings, misspellings, and synonyms.

Meta Title
The meta title is displayed in the top of the browser window and the browser tab. It’s also the link text that appears in the search engine results. Each page should have its own keyword-rich and informative meta title.

AspDotNetStorefront has smartly set it up so that the product title, category title, or topic page title defaults as the meta page title when that has not been specifically configured. The homepage, however, uses the site-wide meta title defined in the AppConfigs as its page title.

Are you making the most of your meta tags? Are you using the most effective keywords you can be? If you’re not sure, you should give us a call and let us help.

In future posts I’ll talk about how to create SEO tags for individual products, images, categories, and topics.

                          

Having trouble figuring out how to navigate the AspDotNetStorefront admin backend? Vortx is now offering a series of instructional training videos to introduce you to some of the cart’s more basic administrative features.

Click and watch our selection of video tutorials for great tips and hints.

• Adding A Product
• Organizing Products
• Managing Topics Part 1
• Managing Topics Part 2
• Adding An Admin User
• AppConfig Parameters

Is there something you’d be interested in learning more about in a video tutorial?  Just let us know.