Search Engine Friendly Website Design Blog

New Feature Implementation For Miva Merchant Wombat PR7

Dan — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 20:25:33 +0000

If you haven’t implemented the new Wombat / PR7 features into your Miva Merchant store, here’s a guide from the Miva Merchant blog to get you going.

To ensure that Miva Merchant upgrades won’t change or break the look & feel of your store, all new Wombat / PR7 updates never make any template changes to existing stores. So, in order to take advantage of new features, you’ll need to go in and make the template changes manually.

Read the full instructions

Ecommerce Know-How: Selecting a Web Designer or Developer

Dan — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 20:31:54 +0000

Consumers often judge how professional and how trustworthy an online store is by nothing more than its aesthetics. While many online retailers are experts in their field, they are not normally experts in graphic design or website development.

In this “eCommerce Know-How” blog post and video on the Practical Ecommerce blog, Armando Roggio (1) explains the difference between a web designer and a web developer, (2) provides five tips for selecting a professional web designer and/or developer, (3) offers opinions about situations you should watch out for when hiring one of these professionals, and (4) set some expectations about price and quality.
We couldn’t agree with him more.

Read the full Ecommerce Know-How: Selecting a Web Designer or Developer post and watch the video on the Practical Ecommerce Blog.

17 SEO Tools & Resources for Optimizing Your Store

Dan — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 21:28:03 +0000

Discover what words your customers use when searching for your products using keyword research. Mark Simon from Miva Merchant has listed some tools that will help you build a solid keyword framework.

Read the blog post on the Miva Merchant website

Demystifying PCI-DSS and PA-DSS Compliance For Web Hosting Customers

Dan — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 06:35:37 +0000

Rick Wilson, Executive Vice President for Miva Merchant, explains PCI Compliance along with the difference and similarities of PCI-DSS and PA-DSS so you can understand how it impacts your business.

Read the WHIR blog post.

New Miva Merchant SEO Ecommerce Store Spotlight: FleetFilter.com

Dan — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 20:16:01 +0000

Brenham Auto began nearly thirty years ago, selling Wix & Napa filters & accessories from their brick and mortar store in Brenham, Texas. In 2005, the original FleetFilter.com online store was created to take the company’s sales philosophy to a national level.

The FleetFilter philosophy is simple: keep the small auto parts store feel with no call centers, outsourced customer service departments, or complicated shipping techniques while retaining the original aggressive pricing structure.

Brenham Napa / FleetFilter.com owner, Brian Schneider originally contacted us out of frustration because of an array of problems with the original FleetFilter Ecommerce store. Issues ranging from the original Windows Web server based store had been hacked, client data had been stolen and no store data or files was ever accessible because the original host “owned” everything.

Other problematic areas included the “Quick Add” feature (add multiple products to the cart simultaneously) never worked, the store didn’t have any product descriptions, the dynamic URLs were useless as far as SEO (and visitors) went and a lot more.

After the launch of the new Search Engine Optimized Miva Merchant Fleet Filter store, Brian had this to say about Webwest Internet / LA Servers:

“Your customers say the greatest things about you and I’m happy to be one of those customers now. I’d gladly do the website with you again. The site looks great, it functions great, and starting next week we’re going to get onto a marketing campaign to let our customers know that we’ve got a new-and-improved site. Thanks for all you’ve done – it’s been a pleasure getting the new site up and running with you.”

FleetFilter.com carries a full range of Wix Oil Filters, Wix Fuel Filters and a wide array of Wix & Napa Filters and Accessories and much more.

It’s said that everything is bigger in Texas and FleetFilter.com sustains this adage by being one of the largest discount Wix & Napa filter houses on the Web while maintaining the small auto parts store experience.

Miva Merchant 5.5 Wombat – Inventory at The Attribute Level

Dan — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 17:20:22 +0000

Miva Merchant 5.5 Wombat should be release within the first couple weeks on January 2010. Check out these Miva Merchant 5.5 Wombat – Inventory at The Attribute Level videos by Rick Wilson, Executive Vice President of Miva Merchant.

Miva Merchant Wombat – Inventory at The Attribute Level

Miva Merchant Wombat – Inventory at the Attribute Level – Admin Controls

Miva Merchant Wombat – Hiding Out Of Stock Master Products with Multiple Variations

Installing Google Analytics In Miva Merchant 5.5

Dan — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 00:06:06 +0000

Excellent instructions on implementing Google Analytics into Miva Merchant 5.5 for important data tracking including sales, site search and a funnel of the standard checkout steps.

Read the full article on the official Miva Merchant blog.

Social Media Trends That Indicate the Future

Dan — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 22:19:42 +0000

One trend that businesses need to grasp is that “real-time is not fast enough.”
Customers are quick and companies, no matter how big the staff, just cannot keep up.

Watch the video on Web Pro News.

Miva Merchant Store Search Engine Optimization Spotlight: Glastore.com

Dan — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 22:51:26 +0000

Scot Miller, owner of Great Lakes Amusement, has been building and selling quality Cherry Master 8 Liner Video Games since 1993. Glastore.com was created using Miva Merchant to add online purchasing to his already established brick and mortar store, based in Green Bay, Wisconsin.

You’ll find a full assortment of Cherry Master and 8 Liner games, individual game boards, plug & play Cherry Master game cabinets, bill acceptors, a full line of eight liner parts and a lot more on the Great Lakes Amusement website.

Scot originally contacted us out of frustration from a of lack of timely support on his Miva Merchant store, designed months earlier but still had technical problems and was never completed.

He was pleased with the actual site design but was concerned about how well the new store had been optimized for search engines as well as its slow response time.

After remedying the store of several detrimental "success" issues including shoddy usability, nonexistent search engine optimization and slow store speed (and more) Scot had this to say about Webwest Internet / LA Servers:

"I’m very impressed with everything including your fantastic customer service. It’s a relief to know I have a host that I can call or email and actually get a response from. My business is building and selling games, not chasing down people who I’m paying to handle things I don’t have time for. Time is money as you very well know. Keep up the great work! I look forward to doing business together for years to come."

When suggested that the homepage copy he’d written "could be much better" Scot replied:

"Most guys would just take my money and say ‘Scot, it looks great, keep up the good work.’ I hate it when people tell me what I want to hear and not what they really believe. I know you’re doing your job to make my site successful and the best it can be – I appreciate all of your input."

Glastore.com is a great site offering an excellent customer experience both online and to the local community of Green Bay for Cherry Master Video Games. Check it out!

There Is More To Optimization Than SEO!

Dan — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 19:28:01 +0000

A Web designer who is more interested in winning awards than ensuring your pages do what they are intended may make a page pretty but many times, pretty doesn’t result in a desired action.

Read the article on SEOBook