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Free Search Information and Tracking Tools

I recently tried Searchmetrics for SEO tracking and keyword analysis.

At around £60 per month their paid for accounts are not for small businesses or single websites but aimed more at SEO companies and larger businesses who need to track multiple sites, including competitors.

However for us smaller businesses and sole traders there is a free option that allows an in depth analysis of a single domain.

According to Searchmetrics: you can look up the SEO Visibility and Social Visibility of one domain at a time plus limited views of KPIs such as organic, paid and universal keyword results and competitors.

What I found handy was to have these all in one place, rather than using different tools from around the web

The free account is probably all a sole trader really needs to start off: Searchmetrics Essentials – try for free!

Multiple Magento Sites with Wildcard SSL

Magento Multiple Websites

I have moved hosts and am in the process of setting up three Magento stores running off of one installation of Magento, one IP and one wildcard SSL.

Previously I used addon domains and ran them as separate websites in Magento.

However, using one IP and SSL certificate this will not work as each would need their own IP address to run as an independent website.

If you want to do this perhaps you may as well get 3 cheap SSL certificates and run them separately? This would of course negate any benefit from Magento’s multiple site ability and make 3 times the work.

Magento and Parked Domains

Now the stores are set up with allgiftsdirect.co.uk as the main domain and the other two as parked domains. This allows the other websites to share the main websites information but requires no extra folders or files. It also proved to be more straightforward to initiate the change in stores using the parked domain method.

Of course nothing in Magento is ever straightforward, using a set up of multiple websites did not work. When purchasing in one website and then going to checkout using the wildcard SSL on the main site, the cookie for the shopping basket would not carry over. There would be an error about ‘your shopping cart is empty’. After trying different cookie settings it still did not work so I switched to using one Magento website.

Magento Stores

I am now running the configuration ‘A’ on the left (but with 3 stores). I have one website with 3 magento stores, each with their own store view.

This allows the swapping of customer accounts, shopping baskets and store switching.

Plus,  I am able to use the wildcard SSL so customers can use the checkout and customer login at summerinflatables.allgiftsdirect.co.uk and access the store with summerinflatables.com.

Most templates also have a store switcher so going back and forth between the different stores should be easy.

If you are not sure about the difference in Magento between stores, websites and store views please click the picture above for more information from the magento commerce website.

The only drawback is that any SSL pages are served on the main website using that template. I therefore need to create a uniform look for customer pages and the checkout so it matches all the stores. The would prevent customers from being concerned they are being redirected to a completely different site and make it clear all the stores are part of the same group.

What is QR Code and how can I use it?

Generated at http://quikqr.com/

What is QR code?

QR code is a small graphic that contains a website URL that can be read by a barcode reader, such as a camera on an Android or iPhone – there are reader/converter apps for those available free. It can contain ISBN, email contacts or plain text. For this article I am just looking at web links.

What does it do?

If you convert a link, such as your website homepage, into a graphic you can then print this out on your invoices. Rather than typing it in, smart phone users can scan it, go straight to your homepage and bookmark it. Very user friendly and no room for typos too.

It is popular in Japan, for example in printed advertising, business cards, billboards and flyers, but uptake is slower in the USA and Europe.

How might I use it?

Here is an example I thought of recently: I purchased a few packets of seeds from an online retailer who print and stick on their own labels to foil packets. Why not include a QR code on each sticker incorporating the URL to that product on their website.  When I run out of seeds I simply pick up my phone, scan the packet and I’m at the buy page for that product.

From a customer service viewpoint how about including a code for instructions, care, propagation, pictures or anything else that might be useful. If a customer is likely to scan for information, chances are high they will return and scan your shopping cart link.

Where could you benefit from using QR codes?
Click Here!

Double Standards of Customer Service at Amazon.

From a buyers point of view, there seems to be a double standard of service at Amazon – one standard for their sellers and (a lower) one for themselves.

Over the Christmas period and suffering from poor weather conditions it was inevitable some items would not arrive on time or be lost. How that was dealt with by companies can be illuminating.

On Amazon when you purchase from third parties they give you a contact seller and file a claim button. This makes it easy to notify a seller about a problem and obtain a refund – it is not so easy to do this with an Amazon purchase.

After wading through help pages and clicking through previous orders one at a time I finally manged to contact Amazon CS about an item not received. Hardly a one click process and the first time i tried the help pages were down and unable to display previous orders so had to try again later.

After a day or two I received a stock reply from Amazon asking me to wait a week before doing anything as they did not have enough staff to answer emails. I then had to contact them again and ask for a refund which was done about 3 days later – with no contact in between. Judging by Amazon’s own forums there were many unimpressed with this.

Amazon set targets for their third party sellers and mark them on performance levels including timely responses and the number of returns and refunds.

Why can’t Amazon work to the standards they set for others?

eBay: Poor Customer Service = Poor Value? Is it worth it?

eBay have a reputation for poor customer service. Ask them a question and they merely copy and paste something from the help pages which may or may not relate to the question you asked. Complain and they ignore you, close your account and they don’t care – a new seller will be along soon.

Yes, they get buyers to their website but with eBay’s appalling customer service and their I don’t care attitude does it really represent good value for money?

I had a few difficult “buyers” recently. I’m not complaining about them. Online or in a shop, there will always be cheats and thieves: a sad part of doing business in Britain.  Sure you should have polices in place to avoid these people as much as possible but don’t treat everyone as if they are out to rip you off – it should not be a race to the bottom. A business should NEVER be run to the lowest common denominator: a mistake many eBayers make.

I believe the majority of people are honest and want to enter into a transaction of mutual benefit and appreciation. Supply a good product, appreciate their custom, offer a good service and the customer will reciprocate.

In these difficult economic times, just like consumers, businesses need to spend their money wisely, making every pound work hard for them. When problems arise and eBay give their usual I don’t care attitude I  stop and wonder what am I paying them for? Hundreds of pounds a month for that? Is that really good value?

After all, I am paying their wages, those eBay employees who copy and paste nonsense, who take no pride in their work and give completely contradictory answers delivered in their usual I don’t care way. Is this a wise way to spend my money?

I have to conclude the answer is no. I wouldn’t expect consumers to put up with that, so I will close my eBay shop. With the new allgiftsdirect Magento website up and running it makes more sense to invest in that.

 

If you’re looking to improve your customer service skills, Click Here!

Importing Customers Into Magento From ZenCart

Once again we use a CSV file to import existing customers into our new Magento shop.

Firstly create a test customer and add an address for them.

Export the file. This we will use as our template.

ZenCart doesn’t have a CSV file for customer details but it does have similar fields in the database and this can be accessed through your server. I go through cPanel and select phyMyAdmin.

The two fields you need are address_book and customers. Select your database then, at the top of the screen select export.  Select address_book, check the CSV  option (or CSV for excel) and save the file. Repeat for customers.

You now have two separate files with all the necessary information to be able to compile a Magento customer file ready for importing.

It is then a case of copy and pasting from the zencart customers into your Magento CSV template. To do this faster combined the two files into one.

Open your address files then select the first blank cell at the end of the data – mine was M1.  Then select data, from other text, your customers file and insert as comma separated into your worksheet starting at the first blank cell (M1 in my case).

Now read across and the customers details should more or less match. Basically name, address, email and password login.

For those lines that do not match I delete the first few cells on a row (A-L) and shift them up. Usually that realigns them. Doing it this way every line will need to be checked carefully for the correct customers details but it will save time copying and pasting later on as we can now do entire columns in one go.

Once finished delete the CSV files as this is information that, while secure on a host, is not secure on a personal computer.

Export ZenCart products, Import Magento products Part 2

Once your products are in Magento you will probably want to change settings.

For example all my products had a quantity of 0 and were not visible or included in searches. To get started quickly I want to change everything to in stock and display the items in the search and catalogue.

Once again we can do this by exporting and importing a file rather than go through everything individually.

Change 1 item to the way you want it by editing the first product on the page.

Catalogue>Manage products>Edit a product.

For one product I changed the following in the product edit from the menu on the right hand side:

General: Status to Enabled, Visibility to Catalogue, Search

Prices: Tax Class

Inventory:  Quantity, In stock yes.

These are the basics but your item will still not show in Magento. You need to assign the product to your website, or store view even if you only have 1 website/view. This is by using the catalogue, products menu, ticking the box by the product and updating attributes then using the websites option.

I found a detailed explanation of it here: how to display products in Magento and assign products to a store view. They also show a video on where to click if you are not sure what to do.

This is another example of the strange quirks of Magento and how user unfriendly it is. Now we know how to do it and have a product in better shape, lets export the file.

System> Import/Export Profiles>Export All Products>Run Profile

The file is found on the server var/export.

The first product should now have all the values in the columns set up correctly so its simple a case of copy and pasting those values in excel.

My changes to copy and paste down the columns are :

B websites

T status, U tax_class_id, V is_recurring, W visibilty, X eenable_googlecheckout

As these are helpfully together in one block we can copy the whole row from T to X and paste is downwards. I changed all mine to:

Enabled Taxable Goods No Catalog, Search Yes

I have also taken this opportunity to once again paste the stock quantity in from the Zencart file. Ensure the is_in_stock column is all set to 1.

Save the file then re-import it as shown in previously in part 1 importing products to Magento from Zencart.

Products should now be in stock, enblesd, searchalble and showing on your site.

Next I shall be making categories and assigning products to categories using the same export/edit/import method.