Alpha-eBiz is a source for independent articles, information, scripts, product reviews, solutions and opinions regarding e-commerce, Web design, Web development, search engine optimization and creating a great user environment for your customers.
Our goal is to provide useful tips for anyone looking for e-commerce and Web development answers for specific problems.
If you are looking for additional ways to sell your products outside of your main web site, there are alternative marketing and sales channels to consider. While eBay is currently the 800 pound gorilla in this arena, it is not the only marketing channel available for small web site owners. Check out this list of sites offering both auctions and fixed price alternatives for Internet marketers.
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E-commerce sites walk a fine line with users. If the site is friendly, easy-to-use, attuned to your audience and the products presented properly, the site should convert visitors to users. However, most e-commerce sites do not work convert visitors as well as they should because they are lacking in features that build trust and help convert visitors into customers.
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JavaScript is a very flexible client-side scripting language that adds interactive features to a Web page. A client-side language runs in a user’s browser. Although JavaScript can also be used as a server-side language (runs on a Web server), it’s primary use in Web development is to add interactive features, such as HTML form input validation, image swapping, mouse rollover effects, drop-down navigational menus, moving objects and other interesting effects, to the user experience.
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Many common web site design mistakes can have a negative impact on a visitor’s user experience. If the goal for your web site is to attract users who will stay long enough to make a purchase or enquire about your services, you need to deliver impressive results as soon as a user lands on your web pages. Greg Loumeau from Dreamco offers his top web design recommendations.
Shopping carts are an essential part of an e-commerce site. But the way that many shopping carts are designed can be very detrimental to search engine rankings. That’s because expertise with search engines is not one of the skills possessed by many designers and developers. A designer’s job is to create an inviting, user-friendly site. A developer adds the database and interactive capabilities. Working with search engines is a separate art and science. The following are features that are important if you wish to see your product pages have a reasonable chance of ranking well with search engines.
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If you are an avid Internet user and use Internet Explorer as your browser, you have probably noticed that there are times when the View Source function in Internet Explorer occasionally stops working. For a Web developer or designer who likes to view the HTML code for a Web site, this can be frustrating. Fortunately, both the explanation to the problem and the solution are usually simple.
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JavaScript is commonly used to provide interactive features on Web site, such as rollover effects, drop down menus and creative animations. But the improper use of JavaScript can drive potential customers away and hinder search engine rankings. Learn what you need to know to avoid JavaScript-related problems. If you don’t, you may find that your site will have numerous problems retaining users and and picking up free search engine listing.
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Google provides a wide range of useful tools that are worthy of investigation. Every web site owner should be aware of these links. Some tools, such as Google’s Webmaster Tools, require registration. If you learn to use these tools, you will gain useful insight into how Google views your web sites. The following is a list of links that provide valuable tools, insight and information to help you utilize Google more effectively.
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Good rankings in search engines depend upon many factors, but one of the most important is having good informational content on a Web page with a good mix of the targeted keyword phrases. The targeted keyword phrases set the keyword theme for a Web page. The content and several other page elements reinforce the theme for the page and proper reinforcement typically leads to higher search engine rankings.
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If you find that your traffic from Google is falling off precipitously, pages in your web site may be getting moved in to Google’s supplemental result index. Google’s Supplemental Results is a secondary database that Google uses to park pages that it feels may not meet its standards. These pages rarely–if ever–show up in search results. There is a wide range of reasons that Google uses to weed out individual pages that it does not deem to be worthy of placement on its search results pages.
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