In the digital age, data drives decisions. For e-commerce store owners, understanding customer behaviour through analytics is key to tailoring shopping experiences and driving sales. But with great data comes great responsibility—especially when it comes to privacy.
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) might seem daunting with its strict rules on data handling. Yet, it offers a unique opportunity to build trust with your customers. By aligning your WooCommerce store with GDPR, you're not just complying with the law; you're showing your customers that their privacy matters.
The integration of tools like Google Analytics 4 (GA4) with GDPR compliance plugins marks a significant step forward. Before we explore this powerful combination, let's delve into the impact of GDPR on your e-commerce business and why it's a game-changer.
In this blog series, we'll explore the intersection of GA4's advanced analytics capabilities and the robust consent management features of GDPR compliance plugins. We'll demystify how they revolutionize data privacy for e-commerce sites and guide you through integrating these solutions into your WooCommerce store. Whether you're looking to enhance your analytics game or ensure your store meets GDPR standards, this exploration will arm you with the knowledge to navigate the future of e-commerce analytics confidently.
In the bustling world of online retail, the introduction of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) marked a pivotal moment. This comprehensive privacy regulation, enacted by the European Union, has far-reaching implications not just within its borders but for businesses worldwide that cater to EU citizens. For e-commerce and WooCommerce store owners in the UK, understanding and complying with GDPR isn't just a legal obligation—it's a cornerstone of customer trust and digital ethics.
At its core, GDPR mandates that businesses must protect the personal data and privacy of EU citizens for transactions that occur within EU member states. This includes requirements for data consent, collection, storage, and transfer. For e-commerce sites, which inherently collect customer data—from browsing history to payment information—the regulation underscores the need for transparent data practices.
E-commerce businesses rely on analytics to understand customer behavior, optimize the user experience, and drive conversions. However, GDPR places strict guidelines on how data can be collected and used. This includes obtaining explicit consent from visitors before tracking their data and ensuring that the data collected is limited to what is necessary for its intended purpose. The challenge for store owners is to leverage analytics tools like GA4 within these constraints, ensuring compliance while still gaining valuable insights.
The implications of GDPR non-compliance can be severe, ranging from hefty fines to reputational damage. For e-commerce stores, this can translate to penalties of up to €20 million or 4% of annual global turnover—whichever is higher. Beyond the financial repercussions, non-compliance can erode customer trust, a critical asset in the competitive online retail space.
While GDPR is an EU regulation, its impact is global. UK-based e-commerce sites that offer goods or services to EU citizens, or that monitor the behavior of individuals within the EU, are also subject to these regulations. This global reach highlights the importance of GDPR compliance for all e-commerce businesses, regardless of their physical location.
Adhering to GDPR is not just about avoiding penalties; it's about building a foundation of trust with your customers. By respecting their privacy and data preferences, you demonstrate that your business values more than just profits—it values the individuals behind every transaction. This trust is invaluable, fostering loyalty and encouraging repeat business in an increasingly privacy-conscious world.
Introduction to Google Analytics 4 (GA4) and Its Advantages
With the sunsetting of Universal Analytics in 2023, Google Analytics 4 (GA4) has taken center stage, heralding a new era in web and app analytics. This shift is not merely an update but a complete reimagining of Google Analytics, designed to meet the evolving needs of e-commerce businesses while addressing the increasing demands for user privacy. For WooCommerce store owners, understanding GA4's capabilities and advantages is crucial in leveraging analytics effectively in a GDPR-compliant manner.
GA4 introduces a user-centric model of data collection, focusing on the entire user journey rather than fragmented sessions or interactions. This approach offers a holistic view of how users engage with your e-commerce site, from first visit to post-purchase behavior. By tracking across platforms and devices, GA4 provides a more comprehensive understanding of customer habits and preferences.
In response to growing privacy concerns and regulations like GDPR, GA4 has been built with privacy at its core. Features such as IP anonymization, data deletion controls, and consent mode are integral, allowing store owners to manage data collection in line with user consent. This ensures that personal information is handled respectfully, enhancing trust and compliance.
GA4 leverages advanced machine learning to uncover trends and predict future user actions, such as potential revenue from customer segments. These insights enable proactive decision-making, allowing WooCommerce store owners to tailor marketing strategies, optimize the shopping experience, and increase conversion rates with data-driven precision.
Unlike its predecessor, GA4 does not rely on predefined event categories. Instead, it offers flexible event tracking, enabling the customization of events to match specific e-commerce activities. This flexibility ensures that every significant interaction, from product views to cart additions, can be monitored and analyzed for a deeper understanding of customer behavior.
GA4's seamless integration with Google's advertising platforms enhances the ability to use analytics insights for targeted advertising campaigns. By understanding customer behavior through GA4, WooCommerce store owners can create more effective ad campaigns, reaching potential customers with personalized messaging and offers.
For WooCommerce store owners transitioning from Universal Analytics to GA4, the change represents an opportunity to enhance their analytics strategy. While the learning curve may be steep, the benefits of GA4's advanced features, privacy considerations, and predictive capabilities make it a powerful tool in the e-commerce arsenal.
Understanding GDPR is just the starting point for e-commerce store owners. It's about turning what could be seen as a hurdle into a significant advantage. Compliance isn't just about avoiding fines; it's a chance to enhance your store's reputation, build customer trust, and ultimately, foster loyalty and increase sales.
In our upcoming posts, we'll dive deeper into how integrating Google Analytics 4 (GA4) with GDPR compliance tools can not only streamline this process but also unlock new insights into your customers' behavior, all while respecting their privacy. Stay tuned for practical tips on making your WooCommerce store a beacon of trust and privacy in the e-commerce world.
Ready to take the next step in aligning your e-commerce store with GDPR and driving your business forward? Keep an eye out for our next post, where we'll break down the nuts and bolts of GA4 and GDPR compliance plugins. In the meantime, why not review your current analytics and data privacy practices? It’s the perfect first step toward making your store not just compliant, but customer-centric and successful. Or you can use our GDPR compliance services!
Before you start comparing different ecommerce platforms, you first need to know what you should be looking for when it comes to an effective e-commerce solution. Make sure that you keep in mind the below factors as you consider where Shopify or WordPress is the right platform for you and your business:
You need to work out how much you can afford to spend on your e-commerce platform, both in terms of the initial outlay and any ongoing costs.
Whether you are a beginner to e-commerce platforms or you have some experience in building a website, you want a solution that you can confidently use.
Think about what other tools and services you may need to integrate to grow your business. Does your preferred platform offer these?
You may need a platform that works with your existing bank or accountancy software, it needs to offer multiple payment options so that your customers have as much choice as possible, with the lowest fee per transaction.
Arguably one of the most important factors to consider, you need to know that your ecommerce platform of choice can grow with your business or be scaled down if needed.
WooCommerce offers the freedom of open source which means that you have complete control over the creation of your website. It also means you can adapt your e-commerce site as and when you want to with ease.
Shopify, on the other hand is a closed platform, so you only have limited product variations, no subcategories and no option to migrate.
WooCommerce is completely free to install and use, making it a great choice for small businesses and new business owners who do not have much spare cash to inject into their website. That being said, with so many plug-ins to choose from, WooCommerce is just as effective for larger, more established e-commerce businesses.
Furthermore, WooCommerce does not charge you a percentage fee of your transactions which will save you a significant amount of money over time.
Although it can be a bit of a learning curve, WooCommerce, as an e-commerce platform, is incredibly flexible. With over 55,000 WordPress plugins, you can add any function imaginable to your e-commerce site, allowing you to outshine your competitors and improve your website over time.
WooCommerce offers PayPal and Stripe payments by default, but it also supports many other popular payment services as well as some regional and less popular payment services. This not only enhances your site's overall user experience but is also a great option for targeting local shoppers in specific regions of the UK.
By using the geolocation feature, you can auto-detect your customer's location using their IP. This is useful if you offer certain products that cannot be delivered to a certain area within the UK or abroad. Through this feature, you can restrict pages, products and categories depending on the user's country or region.
If you need a multilingual ecommerce store, then WooCommerce is the obvious choice. All you have to do is install WPML (a WordPress plug-in, which has a very low yearly subscription) and you are good to go. Shopify is not very useful for multilingual sites, although they do have an app that offers a few languages and currencies, but this application comes with a high monthly subscription fee.
WooCommerce is highly popular choice with dropshipping business, predominantly because you can install extensions that make order fulfilment quick, easy and better for customers. Furthermore, you can easily find extensions that enable you to instantly import products and fulfil orders from your website. You can even build your own ecommerce marketplace and allow other vendors to sell from your site.
As a platform created on WordPress, you can choose from a wide range of mobile-friendly designs and themes which will make the user experience of shopping on your site from a mobile much more user-friendly. Plus, you can enjoy its emergent responsive web technology without having to create new websites.
It's also possible to convert your WooCommerce store into a mobile app, or connect it to anything you could imagine via its REST API.
WooCommerce is incredibly SEO-friendly as it runs on top of WordPress which in itself is standard compliant and good for SEO. You can easily optimise your product descriptions, enable breadcrumbs for internal linking and track your customers in Google Analytics.
As WooCommerce is not tided to any plans, you can add any free or paid extensions from its marketplace or other ones as and when you need to. However, if you choose Shopify, you are tied to their paid plans only. For example, if you want third party shipping rates, you have to purchase their Shopify Advanced subscription which does not come cheap.
As the world's most popular ecommerce platform, WooCommerce sites are easier and quicker to fix for developers, meaning that if you do have any issues with your site in the future, you know they can be dealt with without costing you a fortune or putting your site out of action for too long.
There are not many downsides to choosing WooCommerce as your ecommerce solution of choice, but there are a few things you should bear in mind before choosing this platform.
Not technically a drawback as updates mean better security for your site and its customers. However, some businesses do find the number of updates to be time-consuming and frustrating.
Generally the updates are smooth and quick to implement with no issues, but (like most platforms) on large ecommerce sites it becomes essential to have a developer ready to test and deploy.
If you are wanting to create your ecommerce site entirely on your own and you do not have any experience in web design, you may struggle to get your site up and running without any professional help.
However, with many web tutorials, readily available themes and page builders, the learning curve is not too steep. We feel it's the ideal solution for the start-up that wants to avoid mounting monthly costs.
One of the biggest differences when it comes to Shopify and WooCommerce is that with the former you can create and customise your online store without needing to know a single line of code.
That being said, if you are getting a professional web design agency to create your e-commerce site for you, this will not be an issue as they will be fully knowledgeable in all coding best practices.
There are plenty of built-in analytic features in Shopify that allow you to keep track of elements of your business such as customer behaviour, stock levels and conversion tracking. This enables you to optimise your site for better results.
Baltic Design will build in analytics to your WordPress dashboard, so this is not an issue using WooCommerce!
If you are planning to create your ecommerce site completely on your own without any professional help, Shopify provides great levels of support in the form of their customer service team.
Here at Baltic Design we like to provide great support for WooCommerce too!
WooCommerce offers PayPal and Stripe payments by default, but it also supports many other popular payment services as well as some regional and less popular payment services. This not only enhances your site's overall user experience but is also a great option for targeting local shoppers in specific regions of the UK.
Shopify is a commerce platform that offers a way to quickly launch your dream business and start selling to your customers, wherever they are.
If you already have an established product sales business, or start-up capital, it is worth considering as it's the fastest way to start selling online while just paying a monthly fee.
Any business that sells products as a side-line may also benefit from it's simplicity and speed.
The caveat is however, if your planning on your eCommerce side of the business to be your main revenue stream - you need to find out if Shopify will be flexible enough for your business and whether you will always be happy to be locked into the ecosystem of another big company.
We work with many small businesses that carry the notion of "Shop Small, Shop Local" so new life can be brought back to our high streets, and hopefully this should apply to the local service industry too!
There are a few downsides to choosing Shopify to build your ecommerce site, although you may be able to overcome these depending on your budget and how much customisation you need.
Shopify subscriptions start from as little as around £20 per month, but can increase considerably if you want a more advanced service. However, you also have to pay transaction fees if you do not use Shopify Payments, as well as a payment processor fee for PayPal or Stripe.
Although you can customise your ecommerce site to a certain extend when you use Shopify, it does have some limitations that WooCommerce does not.
Yes, each ecommerce platform has a learning curve, but Shopify's one is slightly steeper than others. This is mainly due to the complicated jargon on the site which can be confusing for those not in the know.
When it comes to building a site for your brand-new ecommerce business, it can be tempting to opt for the path of least resistance. This may be by choosing a platform provider that is cheaper or one that offers exactly what you need in the short term.
However, it is worth remembering that you are building a business with the desire for it to be a success, for it to grow and evolve over time, both to adapt to the needs of your customers and to be more profitable for you. Therefore, you also need to be thinking about what is best for your business in the long term. You need an e-commerce platform that will allow you to easily customise and scale your site as and when needed. You also need a service that will provide the support you need to help your ecommerce site reach its full potential.
Here at Baltic Design, we specialise in the web design and development of WooCommerce websites for businesses within the ecommerce industry. We have a wealth of experience in building successful and adaptable websites that will grow with your business and help you achieve your goals. We offer an all-inclusive service that will help you create your ecommerce site from start to finish and can work with you to evolve and maintain the site once it is up and running - our aftercare support is unrivalled.
Already using Shopify? We can quickly export your Shopify catalogue, import your products, orders, reviews and everything else and migrate your store to WooCommerce.
Get in touch here today to book a free personal consultation and discover how we can help you to enjoy success in your endeavours.
In this post, I'm going to share everything I know about attracting good prospective engineering clients into your business.
I've separated the post into 7 traits which contain the most important aspects of a professional engineering website. Improving any of these traits will help increase the productivity of your website - generating leads for your business.
Let's Get Specific
Specifically, I'm going to help you
Sound good? Let’s go.#
Authority
The work your firm does is technical requiring many competencies in skilled areas. It’s important your website demonstrates to visitors that your company is an authority in its field.
Showing Accreditations and Awards is a great start and essential if you have them.
Accreditations & Certificates should usually be in your footer close to your contact form. Awards can be higher up on your Home page if they are recent.
Move them down once they are 6 months to a year old.
This is one of the most visited pages on a website, it’s a great place to add a mission statement. Here you can add more technical detail about any certifications and company facts.
It's important to note you should be writing for your customer. Talk to them about the problems you can solve for them.
Include a Staff Section to show the qualifications of your team and any areas of expertise they have.
A staff section can also display the friendly human element of your company.
These are an essential part of securing client confidence in your company. Display testimonials across your whole site, positioning them in relevant places when possible.
Case Studies show how you have helped to solve other similar problems in a way leads can relate to. It’s best to use a four part structure to demonstrate your role in the project.
Add photos and video to give credibility to your message.
A relevant testimonial from the company will underline authority in your field.
Blogs are often tough for many companies – what should they write about? It’s essential to find out what your customers like to read.
This doesn’t always have to be content related your products, services or even your company.
Write helpful and informative content to benefit your customers.
Many subjects that interest your target client are worth writing about.
Company news such as new products, services, members of staff, or awards are an easy win for blog posts.
Write them in a way that draws in your clients, and explain how this update will benefit them.
Engineers are often too busy working to get involved in a marketing capacity.
To get the best stories, a staff member or copywriter should actively talk to your team.
Find out what they are proud of and what they are currently working on at the moment. This provides easy content for your blog.
However, these events don’t always happen often enough in one company. It’s important to generate other ideas that interest your clients enough to read and share.
Write about industry news to demonstrate that you keep current with technology and industry events.
The more you know your target customer the easier this is:
Use LinkedIn to strengthen relationships with clients and win projects. Share your case studies and posts with a wider audience, driving traffic to your website.
Facebook & Twitter are not usually a big consideration for an engineering firm, yet they provide an easy way to share your blog posts and case studies.
“Your client may not care about numbers of followers or likes, but Google does.”
You will find they are increasingly used by a wider section of the engineering industry.
Case studies and blog posts should encourage visitors to share them.
Connect your site to your social profiles and ensure they contain a link back to your site.
Your client may not care about numbers of followers or likes, but Google does.
Google uses social signals when ranking your website. These will influence your site's authority in search engine results.
If you have international clients, display a Google map showing their diverse locations. Use pins for each project you have worked on.
A promotional website is often a billboard as an ecommerce site is to a bricks and mortar shop.
An online shop needs regular updating, organising and maintenance combined with serious security measures and a means to accommodate and communicate with its customers.
Open Source Platforms such as Magento or Wordpress with WooCommerce are made ready to sell, so if your agency is building your website on a platform like this, your money should stretch a lot further than if they had built your online shop from scratch.
This means your budget can be spent where it counts. Ecommerce shops are significantly more expensive that promotional websites and they need the same considerations plus the following services and features which you should be paying for:
The default payment method set up on open source ecommerce software is usually PayPal and little else so if you want to process credit cards in another way you will need to find the relevant Payment Gateway. Sometimes these are freely available plugins, sometimes they cost a small fee or just exist as code that needs to be integrated by a suitably qualified developer.
If you’re wanting to accept and store credit card details, this is quite a serious affair and you will need an SSL Certificate which should only need to cost £100 or so but can be sold for thousands by some dealers.
It’s worth noting that some payment processing companies can store CC details for you and thus alleviate the legal and financial risks involved in holding CC numbers. However an SSL Certificate has been shown to improve customer confidence and also improve search engine ranking.
If your store needs hundreds or thousands of products adding, you should factor in an administration cost for adding all your products to your site. It’s GUARANTEED that this will be cheaper if you can train an employee in your company to do this or find an admin freelancer online.
However, if you can provide a correctly formatted spreadsheet to your ecommerce developer this should not equate to a huge cost as product details can be uploaded via the spreadsheet.
An ecommerce site has many necessary pages that need a focused design and layout to enforce branding, increase consumer confidence and guide customers to their purchase.
Product Cart, Checkout Page, Member Profile Pages are just some of many extra pages that are generated automatically but will need at least some element of consideration when building your shop.
The wording and design of Purchase Orders, Invoices, Newsletter and other email templates needs to be considered to provide a consistent element of professionalism to your customer interaction.
If you’re selling, for example, clothes available in several colours and sizes – there is probably a plugin to help you, but the more complex your product package is the more likely it is that this is where you might be spending a significant part of your budget.
E.g. A site sells bespoke furniture of which the style, colour and material of individual parts can be chosen to create a unique chair or table.
There are often ways around complexity that involves resorting back to more old fashioned sales methods such as email or telephone, so be sure your requirement is an essential one rather than one that could be placed on a wish list for a second or third phase of development.
Shipping Costs by weight and delivery costs by postcode, are all achievable and there may be a plugin out there that can help. More than likely though, if you don’t keep your delivery costs simple then you’ll need to pay for development of shipping matrices.
Ecommerce sites need a lot of bug testing before you unleash them upon your customers. It’s better to know everything works before you drive traffic to your site.
Like a real shop – there will be a few hiccups, abandoned carts and missing orders – it’s a question of keeping them to a minimum and under control. You want your site to run smoothly when it’s launched as customers probably won’t visit again if they come across an obstacle when trying to buy something.
It’s necessary to check the flow of your site towards your checkout – at the very least it should be intuitive and easy for customers to buy with no blocks or obstacles along the way. Ideally this flow should be monitored once the shop is open and further refined and streamlined.
It’s often a unique feature on an ecommerce site that makes it a success. A new way to interact, engage and benefit customers is exactly where the web gold rush begins.
Custom Greeting Card shops, Comparison Sites and Holiday websites have brought great innovation to the web and illustrated why ecommerce can sometimes be the best solution for a business.
This is where the development expense should lie for a site – you are paying for something uniquely yours that in theory you could package and resell to other vendors.
Bespoke code has a tangible value, what the developer creates should belong to you and therefore the developer rightfully deserves to be paid well for the creation of the code.
An agency can provide great assistance with creating and marketing your online presence. However not all agencies are created equally and it’s worth knowing what you can get for your money before you sign any contract.
Don’t get a third party to buy it for you; find a reputable domain vendor or hosting company to buy from directly.
It’s easy and your domain could be worth a lot of money one day; this will avoid any potential dispute with your agency further down the line.
While it often makes sense to be hosted with your agency, it’s worth checking out some online hosting to get an idea of how much hosting should cost.
The agency should be able to give you an idea of how much space and bandwidth your hosting will have which you can then compare.
If your hosting seems a little on the expensive side it may be worth asking why – do they include any free maintenance / upgrading to your website in their package?
It’s reasonable to expect an agency to charge a small premium on their hosing services to cover costs, but you should ensure you’re getting the most for your money.
If your agency proposes that they will host the site, make sure you have the mechanical and legal options to move your website in case your relationship with the agency dissolves in some way further down the line.
Check that you will have legal ownership of your site – you should own copyright for any created artwork, code and copy you have paid for to be created.
You should be given access to a hosting control panel and should be able to
Good control panels should offer much more such as an email account facility, domain forwarding and server statistics.
If you intend to create a new killer web app like Youtube or Facebook, development will be expensive. For everyone else who is using the web to promote or sell, there may be a stock solution to suit your needs available to buy or download for FREE.
A promotional or eCommerce website can be created using free, open source software such as Wordpress and Magento with almost any required feature you need.
It’s now quite easy to create your own website, so if you’re hiring professionals, you should be able to focus your budget on aspects of the website that make it unique to your business and not pay over the odds for commonly available functions.
A good web designer will give your website a professional appearance that fits your brand and ensure the website is coherent, well laid out and easy to use by customers.
Responsive design involves an extra coding element as well as a design one, ensuring your website looks good on tablets and smartphones. It’s a worthwhile investment and one that can be budgeted for when you aren’t paying over the odds for your basic site.
There are many free and stock premium ‘plugins’ and code snippets to add features to your site. Your developer should be able to add these at a minimal cost.
You may need some custom code for a feature unique to your site, or to improve upon an existing plugin. It’s worth paying for this kind of development as it adds a unique value to your website.
If you just need to sell a few virtual or simple products through PayPal, there are many ways to do this cheaply or for free. A developer can help add this functionality to your site at a relatively low cost.
If you’re serious about selling online, you will need to ensure your shop is competitive and this could cost twice to ten times as much as a promotional website depending on a number of factors including bug testing and maintenance.
Read 10 Features & Services worth paying for in an ecommerce website.
While it’s apparent that the web is increasingly accessed by phones and tablets on the move and on the sofa, many websites are yet to be updated to respond to this and the result can be very frustrating for the customer.
Websites with drop down menus that don’t work on iPad, booking forms that simply break on mobile phones and newsletter popups that render sites inaccessible once popped to anything but PC’s and laptops are still amazingly commonplace even on the most highly visited websites.
This is an opportunity! This is a chance to outmanoeuvre your competition to provide a site responsive to all who visit. If it’s easier to browse, book or buy on your website by mobile or tablet, visitors will prefer your site over the competition.
Responsive design can offer different content, depending on what device your customer is visiting your site with and how much bandwidth they have.
Your website can offer a rich media experience to desktop PC browsers while still providing a fast experience to mobile browsers with a slower connection to the internet.
It’s also possible that your business attracts more mobile customers than any other medium – if you already have a website you can easily check this using your google analytics account:
A wedding car hire company recently found that over 70% of their web traffic was coming from mobile and tablet search.
This makes a lot of sense – many soon to be wed couples are in an age range that embraces new technology and often will have the latest smartphone or tablet.
Furthermore it’s quite likely they will be:
There are lots of different size mobiles and tablets out there – how many designs do I need?
There are many other reasons to ensure your site is responsive
With Android and Google glass – Google loves the mobile web and is taking every step towards providing a more mobile experience.
The latest Hummingbird update is just the beginning as Google now tailors its services to mobile web users with voice search and location aware indexing.
Google will prioritise websites optimised for mobile search, and while design will not affect SEO, there is no point in increased traffic if it doesn’t convert to sales!
Some more examples of Mobile Web Design
Home DIY and decorating businesses could provide better mobile browsing for workmen on site.
Restaurants could ensure booking forms and availability information were readily available and working for mobile users nearby.
Venues could provide mobile friendly gig listings for customers who are already out and looking where to go next.
What about your business? What could a mobile friendly website do for you?
Over the past few years we’ve seen SME’s start to sit up and realise the importance of SEO to their business, but there are so many myths and rumours out there it’s often tricky to keep current with what is actually going on.
You may well be aware that listing keywords became redundant many years ago, you may have heard of the Panda and Penguin updates to Google’s search algorithms that among other things, penalised too much use of keywords in a body of text.
However, the new hummingbird update is a significant change to the way Google indexes websites, and if you’re spending time and money on SEO then it’s vital that you ensure you are making the correct adjustments to remain as high as you can in search results for your trade.
If you think of Google as if it were a car, then penguin and panda updates were merely tweaks to the engine. Hummingbird is basically like taking the entire engine out of the car out and replacing it with a brand new one!
For most of us there is no need to panic – as always Google is attempting to cut out the spammy and non-relevant sites from your search.
If you are stuffing your website with keywords, or paying for dubious links back to your website, then you may find that your site will begin to drop in rankings in the near future.
Previously, Google Search returned ‘statistically’ probable answers to the query using inbound links, meta data, anchor text and keywords found in your text.
Now Search is becoming personalised, local, socially contextual (e.g. analysing links from Twitter and Facebook) and with this is becoming far more accurate and intuitive.
Rather than attempting to identify the individual keywords or phrases that are found in a search query, the new Hummingbird update looks at the query as a whole. It considers the whole sentence and then looks for the most relevant results.
More than this though, it provides a more rounded list of results that give background information as well as supporting information too.
You may have seen documentaries about engineers and programmers trying to get robots or computer programs to ‘recognise’ things – whether it’s an object, a person or the spoken word.
With Hummingbird, Google is attempting to do the same for web search. The things needing recognition are named ‘entities’.
Entities are formed from analysing the relationship between various pieces of data sourced from across the web – the most trusted data sources form the strongest associations with the entity.
In turn, if an entity has many strong data sources associated with it, it becomes a trusted point around which any other related data will revolve.
An entity could be a famous person, a sport, or any other topic that may be searched. Most relevantly, it could be your particular brand, your trade, or your trade in a specific location.
Asking a question on Google Search will now provide a much wider and more relevant set of results than were ever possible before.
Often answers are provided at the search box alongside the suggestions. This can mean on a direct search – if your website and social media are optimized correctly - Google can pull up a map to your business with opening times and relevant key features before the user has even checked out the resulting list of links.
Hummingbird concentrates on query strings rather than individual words and this means that it will have obvious implications on pages that utilize and include long-tail keywords.
Long-tail keywords have always been considered beneficial because they typically have a high conversion rate from highly targeted visitors. However, it has proven difficult to benefit from much traffic as a result of them being found on a page.
Long-tail keywords, which are normally added to pages during the natural process of writing high quality content, may generate more traffic for a website in the future.
Google considers the authority of a page, and even the authority of a page author, to be extremely important.
Now, authority will become even more relevant and pertinent.
Hummingbird will help ensure that Google delivers users to the most appropriate page of a website, rather than to a home page or top level page. As such, every single page should be closely targeted to potential visitors. Not only will this help improve conversion rates as part of a conversion rate optimization campaign but it may also help to drive traffic to the pages of a website via Google results too.
Analysts believe that these changes are heavily influenced by Google's desire to become more mobile. As well as their mobile search engine pages, Google also owns Android which even has its own voice search capabilities.
Hummingbird will have a direct impact on those who employ mobile friendly landing pages or sites.
It’s far quicker and easier for mobile browsing on the go when your site has a design for mobiles and tablets in mind. Otherwise your customers might get frustrated and leave your site to find one they can use.
Google is responding to the fact that more searches are coming from mobile devices and often using voice.
Programs such as Google Now and Siri are becoming more useful and common than ever before.
Voice search often means that people will use whole sentences, questions, and more complex queries when they speak rather than typing in the best keywords they feel will fit what they are looking for.
Hummingbird will determine the most relevant and highest quality pages that meet the needs of the searcher.
Take advantage of social signals and user groups to help get your message, product or service in front of those who would benefit most from it. After all, the web was created for the ‘person’, not the keyword.
Think about your content, location and tone. Does your client’s website answer the key questions that a searcher would ask?
Site owners that rely on the creation and distribution of high-quality content and that steer clear of black-hat techniques, looking to build multiple traffic streams using a universal marketing approach are those that will enjoy better long term results.
While we can help develop and provide custom designs for a number of shopping carts, we would definitely recommend Magento as the best solution for developing your ecommerce site.
Magento is a remarkably flexible ecommerce platform that is trusted by world leading brands and while there is an Enterprise Edition available, aimed at large corporations; it has an open source version, the community edition that is probably the most popular shopping cart on the internet.
The community edition is generally all that is needed for most SME’s as it has enough power and versatility to get the job done form most online sales requirements straight out of the box.
Even better - as it is open source, many features that the community edition does not come with have been covered by independent developers and are available as free downloads or at a reasonable price. Localisation for the UK in the form of postcode finders and Royal Mail delivery matrices are all freely available, as are preferred UK payment gateway options such as Sage pay.
The main issues with many free open source and indeed retail shopping carts are generally similar, Magento has far too many great features to list here and it’s definitely worth checking out their site.
However here were the features we liked most:
Product Attributes and Variations
Product variations such as colour, size often pose a problem, even more so when price differences come into play with attributes such as weight and material. Many shopping carts simply don’t address this.
Let’s take the relatively simple example of t-shirt sales; with many carts you need to enter your product multiple times for each combination of colour and size. This is not ideal and wastes time for the shop keeper and also the customer, as they need to scroll through the many combinations to find the right size and colour they want.
With Magento, you can assign attributes and variations to a product with ease, adding a price increase or decrease if needed. The customer will see a dropdown menu for the attribute on the product page and the final price will update automatically with the customers selection.
Product Groups, Cross Sell and Upsell
You may want to sell PC components, but you may also want to have a “build your PC” option where you can group combinations of components together in certain ways; prevent or warn against the purchase of incompatible products, recommend complimentary products, or offer a discount with a specific group of products. This is all possible using magento community edition.
Price Matrices and Shipping
Often where shopping carts fall down is the area of shipping. When weight and size need to govern the shipping cost and when bulk order discounts and shipping distance come into play, the solution is often costly and in need of bespoke programming taking time to develop.
Using Magento can go a long way to solving many of these issues as modules for popular logistics companies such as Royal Mail, UPS and FedEx already exist to calculate shipping costs based on weight and distance. It is also possible to set pricing tiers for the value of the customer’s order.
Payment Gateways
Many small businesses don’t realise the complexities and potential cost that setting up online transactions involve. Security has become a very serious issue after many news stories of hacked databases with customers financial details stolen have been in the press there are many issues to consider.
The easiest way to sell online currently is with Paypal and also Google Checkout – these come integrated with Magento out of the box, as do many other great google apps such as analytics. You can set these up very quickly as long as you have Paypal and google accounts and you can be selling online on the day of publishing your site.
Many SME’s however feel the need to have a more professional checkout service and take credit cards directly on their site – there are many payment gateway providers providing this service such as Sagepay (Protx) Worldpay and Nochex. As Magento has a large community of developers, its often the case that the most popular gateways have modules to integrate them available for free or at cost effective price.
We connected a shopping site we had built to Sagepay – the module was freely available online. Many gateways require a lot of test transactions and verification before they can be deployed, often taking a week or two before going live. Sage pay can be set up in a matter of days with only one test transaction before going live. It worked like a charm and sage customer support were supportive friendly and helpful along the way.
How we can help
We can provide you with a unique design for your website and shopping cart to give your ecommerce site the professional look. We can design a look for even your administration section so your brand is continually reinforced even for staff.
As with other open source CMS, the software may be free, but technical knowledge of HTML, CSS JQuery and PHP are needed to extend and develop the software to tailor it to you needs. We have experience in modifying Magento to tailor the software to your exact needs.
Martin from the NEC already had the right idea, he had built his company website using wordpress as a CMS and just needed a great theme design to make it pop.
Since the NEC provide events management and equipment for a massive range of party entertainment – from paintball and foam cannons to bouncy castles and rodeo – it was not hard to be inspired when coming up with design ideas for this site.
First we asked about the websites wide target market, as NEC’s services range from Stag and Student Events to Children’s parties, which would usually demand very different designs.
We then asked which sections of the market needed addressing most. From here we could focus the design on its target audience without alienating other potential customers.
After building the site we integrated it with a popular email marketing client, to allow Martin to create email campaigns around various products. We connected google maps and provided SEO advice which we will be following up on as his site develops.
Hey Wait! Before you go why not download our 6 Fundamentals for Website Success PDF?
It's a great resource to ensure your site is performing in tip top condition!
With a special focus on e-commerce, web development, and UX/UI design, we are the go-to choice for businesses not only in Newcastle and the North East but also throughout the UK.
Located in Gateshead, Baltic Design is at the forefront of the digital landscape, offering expert troubleshooting, speed optimisation, and robust hosting solutions.
Hey Wait! Before you go why not download our 6 Fundamentals for Website Success PDF?
It's a great resource to ensure your site is performing in tip top condition!
With a special focus on e-commerce, web development, and UX/UI design, we are the go-to choice for businesses not only in Newcastle and the North East but also throughout the UK.
Located in Gateshead, Baltic Design is at the forefront of the digital landscape, offering expert troubleshooting, speed optimisation, and robust hosting solutions.
