Speed, we all love it and want more of it! Fast computers, faster internet connections and faster internet browsers are all well and good, but what can we do to make a faster web page? Every day, web sites and online stores are getting flashier.  CSS and JavaScript can do a lot of cool stuff, and images can help a site grab your attention.  Recently, Google has begun using page load times to adjust search rankings, so make that one more reason to speed things up a bit. What I am going to talk about today will Smush your images, compress your JavaScript and minif your CSS, even use Sprites to help bring that slow site up to speed!

Continue reading “minified, smushed, and compressed!” »

There has been some buzz as of late over ways to convert visitors who would otherwise leave the site for any number of reasons.  In  a recent article from Practical Ecommerce they talked about converting users that land on a 404 page.  Most of the time they will get a 404 page if you remove an item from the store and or site and the visitor clicks on an old, for example on a search results page.  The page they are attempting to view is not available and they will see a 404 error. Continue reading “custom 404 page” »

The Yahoo Store is a wonderful platform, easy to use as everything has its place: images, text, item info. With the basic setup it will please most customers and Yahoo does a great job with these things.  Some store owners want more, such as an image light box, custom navigation bar or more images, for a few examples.  This last one is what I will show you today, we will be adding more images! Right now the store has 2 images per item, the main image and an inset image. The inset image is placed in the product description area and text will wrap around the image. What I will show you today is how to add 4 images total and move them to just under the main image. With that you can also use the post on Light box to add even more flair to your store. Image on left is of Woven Art & beyond

Continue reading “Adding more images to the Yahoo! Store” »

You have your store, you have your products, now it’s just a waiting game for customers, Right? wrong! I would like to know if you take the time to shop your own store, and how often? I browse and shop my site once a week, and not just to add an item to my cart but to place a full order, yes, a full order.  You might think “that will mess up my stats!” well, would you rather have stats that are off every so often, or a failed shopping cart?  You need to see if your card processor is working, and to know what to expect when a customer goes into your cart.  If you miss something, then your customer is going to miss something.

Continue reading “shopping cart abandonment” »

Right now I have a few items that I would like to post but I would like to hear from you! anything that you would like me to do a write-up on i will give you. so just comment below and let me know!

one thing that drives me nuts day in and day out is images that enlarge in a new window or on a new page! why when there are so many free options out there that can help you “click to enlarge”. what i will show you today is how to add a light box to your yahoo store. and i am not going to use one that does the full-page only because it has a lot more javascript then i like running (more http request the slower the page loads) i am going to use this option from a site called Dynamic Drive, you can get the code here. Continue reading “Adding a light box to your Store” »

When it comes to domain names and finding the right name for your site or business what seems to be the best practice? when you look at domains that everyone knows what do you think of? well i think that the most used domain name are google, yahoo, bing, amazon, ebay, youtube and more, but as the internet is getting bigger and bigger good domains seem to run a premium online. People tend to move to domains that really describe the business and seem to be long and hell to type in. when you find a site like www.this-is-my-store-and-buy-from-me.com seems to be too long in my mind and if you do have a long domain do you use dashes or just run the words together? Continue reading “domain name, short and sweet or more descriptive” »

Installing a WordPress blog with a yahoo store, the right way to help SEO

To start make sure that your store is set to store editor and not webhosting as the steps are different and make sure to uninstall any other blogs on the domain.

Continue reading “Installing a WordPress blog with a yahoo store” »

i am not a pro when it comes to SEO or search engine optimization but there are a few items i would like to share with any readers out there. so a few things that i have seen rank well with in google and is easy to do for a yahoo store is the meta description and besides page title are the only head tags that i work on. now for meta description i like to build them a certain way, i use the item at that page, a short item description then the item price. that will make a iphone charger look like this to search engines

Iphone charging cable, car charger for 3g and 3gs iphones and 2g itouch, $14.95

from what i have been seeing from google and other search engines is they like to see everything right there on the search page, one click to the item 2 to buy that item. why not. now like i said that i am not a SEO god and i know what i talk about from the books that i read and from googles webmaster pages.

more info @ http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=70897&hl=en

today was the first roll out of what i am sure many updates in 2010 for Yahoo stores and Yahoo Merchant solutions. If you are not aware  of what they released check out the yahoo store blog @ http://www.ystoreblog.com/blog/2010/01/january-2010-release-notes/

One nice thing they talk about is “bringing you customer registration features in 2010 has been one of our top development priorities over the last several months” now that is something that i look forward to as a yahoo MS customer and Developer!!