 |
 |
Add Weblicity Marketing to MyYahoo!
Add Weblicity Marketing to MSN
RSS Feed
|
 |
10 Tips to Analyze Your Competitors Websites
Sunday, October 23, 2005
Analyzing Competitive Ecommerce Sites
When analyzing the sites, try to look for a certain point of weakness that is an overall theme… This will allow you to easily see the first area to focus on.
1. Speed – How fast does the site load? Does it have a lot of big graphics that take a long time to load?
2. Look and Feel – Does the site look professional? Does it create trust? Would you buy from them if you judged them based on their site alone?
3. Navigation – How easy is it to find a product you are looking for? How easy is it to find information, such as contact and shipping prices.
4. Product Selection – Do they have a wide selection of products? While you are checking out their selection, you can keep an eye out for other products that you can sell and jot them down.
5. Prices – How are their prices compared to other sites?
6. Guarantee – Do they offer a guarantee? How long is it (30 days..etc), do they refund shipping?
7. Shipping prices and timeframe – How much is shipping? Do they offer shipping free if an order is higher than a certain amount? How do they ship (UPS, USPS, Fedex)?
8. Do they have a mailing list that they send out and ask you to sign up for?
9. Do they show good security on their site, like a hacker-safe certificate or something like that?
10. Pictures – how good are their pictures.. do they convey the product in the best way possible?
posted by Weblicity Marketing @ 5:14 PM
|
|
 |
 |
 |
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Saturday, October 22, 2005 Since search engines are the first stop for people on theInternet looking for goods or services, the position your website appears in search results is an important factor. If your URL shows up far down the results list, the chances of the consumer never finding you increase incrementally. Once you achieve a high search engine position, it is essential that you make sure you maintain the high rankingyou have worked so hard to achieve.Analyzing Your Search Engine Positions
This means you must come up with a strategy to monitor your search engines positions. This strategy is crucial to the success of any marketing campaign. Think of your searchengine positions as your online portfolio. Would you let your stock portfolio be ruled by chance and market fluctuations, or would you keep close tabs on your stocksso you could buy and sell when the time is right? This is the way you must consider your search engines positions.
Be aware that at first, after you have launched your searchengine campaign and done all the right things to increase your rankings, you will most likely see a continual upward climb. What you need to be on the lookout for is the moment that upward climb reaches a plateau. When this happens,your search engine position campaign moves into stage two,the monitoring and protecting stage.
In stage two, do not be concerned about the short-termfluctuations in your positions. These are similar to the subtle rising and falling of stocks in a portfolio. Short-term movement is an integral part of the wholeprocess. It's the long-term changes that you must watch for and prepare to act on immediately.
Analyzing the long-term trends of search engines positionsis imperative. The way in which search engines rankwebsites may change at the drop of hat. If you are unaware of these changes - many of which are subtle yet can be deadly to your ranking - your position may drop to the bottom of the list before you can get your bearings. To prevent this kind of precipitous drop, you must create a system to monitor your positions on a monthly basis. Devise a chart to keep tabs on your top ranking positions or your top pages, and make sure to watch "the market" closely.
Each search engine uses a formula to compute website rankings. When a search engine changes this formula in anyway, it may raise or lower your ranking. Some searchengines use a number of different formulas, rotating themso that a formula doesn't become overused or outdated. Depending on which formula is being applied, your search engine position may suddenly drop or rise in rank significantly. Therefore, you must check your positions frequently in order to catch when a search engine changes formulas and what effect it has on your positions.
You must also deal with your competition - a crucial factor you must always be vigilant about. Your competitor'sposition may suddenly rise, automatically lowering yourposition. Or their position may drop, pushing your positionhigher. Each month, expect position changes due to the continual changes that are occurring in your competitor'sposition, and be prepared to adjust your marketing strategy to compensate for decreased rankings. Monitoring these fluctuations will also give you vital information about howto improve your website to increase your position in searchresults.
Of course, you must discern what the most popular searchengines are in order for your monitoring efforts to beeffective. Right now, there are ten popular search enginesthat direct most of Internet traffic to your sites. The challenge you face is that these top ten may change frommonth to month.
This means that your must not only monitor your searchengine positions, but you must also keep track of theranking popularity of the search engines you aremonitoring. Find out which search engines people use mostfrequently every month and be sure to live in the present!People are fickle about their favorite search engines, andit takes constant vigilance to follow their dalliances. The search engines they loved when you first launched your campaign may be old news in the next few months. You must adjust your list of engines according to the whims of the Internet users. Check out http://www.searchenginewatch.com/reports/netratings.html for a current list of website favorites.
Another factor to monitor carefully is a sudden drop ofyour positions in all search engines. This is not the same as monthly fluctuations - this is a neon red warning sign! It could mean a number of different things.
It all your search engine positions have plummeted, it mayindicate that search engines spiders - those sneakyprograms that seek out your site and rank their positions -have found some type of problem with your website. If you have recently changed the code, for instance, the spider may become utterly confused and consequently drop your positions disastrously. If a spider creeps up on your website when it is down for adjustments or changes, you mayactually disappear from a search engine index entirely. Or a search engine may drastically change its formula, andsuddenly all of your website come up as irrelevant. If that search engine is a current favorite, it may create a domino effect, causing all of your position to drop in all search engines.
Finally, pay attention to your keywords. Keywords are thefoundation bricks of the entire search engine system, andthey demand individual scrutiny in your monitoring efforts.If you have found that a number of your positions have plummeted, it may mean that a page of your website has become invisible or inaccessible to search engine spiders. Or the competition for that particular keyword or phrase has recently rocketed into outer space. In either case, you must act quickly and efficiently to regain lost ground.
Your search engine marketing campaign is an investment. It costs you time and money on a continual basis. Protect this investment as diligently as you would your financial portfolio. In the same way, track your positions from an objective perspective, and monitor your positions on a regular basis. Make sure your time and effort reap rewardsby keeping your eye on the big picture - your long-term marketing campaign. posted by Weblicity Marketing @ 5:07 PM 0 comments
0 Comments:
Post a Comment