Online stores seem a little more difficult to optimise for search engines due to many factors like less  internal links, no user generated content, very little helpful content and so on. However, following these tips for e-commerce sites could be a great step forward when trying to optimise a website for search engines.

1.      Attach a blog to your e-commerce site

A blog is the best way for getting user-generated content, build a great structure of internal links and also promote your services or products. Don’t have time to write content for it? Hire a blogger, might seem like an extra-expense however in time you will see that worth every penny invested.

2.      Unique product description

Easiest way to create unique product description is to re-write the description from the manufacturer’s site. It would be best to write descriptions from scratch but again, this is very time consuming – re-writing description is one of the middle-solutions available.

3.      SEO-friendly URLS

How many times do you see those long URLs with different characters that are nothing but trouble for search engine optimisation? One of the best solutions would be to create a structure like site/product-name.

4.      Unique titles, descriptions and keywords for every product

Although this is time consuming, it is one of the best ways to avoid duplicate content issues and help you create unique content on each page. Also, as for other websites you should keep one thing in mind: do not overdo it! (keyword stuffing is a no-no).

5.    User-generated content

Reviews are probably the best way for generating unique content without any work from you. Give your users the possibility of reviewing your products without any hassle (one thing that can be implemented would be writing reviews without registering, though getting more user-generated content without the hassles of registering, verifying emails and so on).

Although there are many tips that can be implemented on an e-commerce site however we at WebCreationUK believe those above are the best ones that can be used by any website owner in order to get better results in the online environment.

It wasn’t only the high street that suffered a festive slowdown – on-line shopping in general also dipped 3% during the traditionally lucrative period. However, some e-tailers did buck this trend and a study shows that while consumers spent less, more shoppers went on-line to shop in November and December 2008.

Now e-commerce forecasters are predicting that if businesses are hoping to beat the credit crunch – and have a successful, long-term business – then e-tail is the only way to do it.

At the same time e-rail analysts have revealed that the fastest growing on-line product genre in recent months has been sports and fitness. Next up was video games and consoles. In third place was clothing and accessories.

Those e-tailers suffering the biggest credit crunch hit include office supplies, music and movies, jewellery and computer hardware.

Are you an e-tailer that is bucking or confirming this trend?

In a move projected to strengthen the UK economy, the Chancellor has this afternoon announced that the standard rate of VAT (Value Added Tax) will be cut from the 1st of December 2008 for 13 months. The previous rate of 17.5% has been cut to 15% to encourage consumer spending and stimulate demand.

While it should have this effect, it has also been labelled a ‘retailer nightmare’ as thousands of shops up-and-down the country are faced with re-labelling their products. Luckily for an e-commerce store, this process can be as simple as flicking a switch

Most stores have a setting for VAT which can be easily changed via an administration area giving a considerable advantage over offline retailers.  Not that this is all plain-sailing however; you will still need to check that your pricing is consistent if you do have an offline presence such as a mail-order catalogue or store.

Whether this will indeed result in more custom is a matter of conjecture. If your standard product retails at say £100 including VAT then a customer will save about £2.23 if the full saving is passed on to the customer, hardly enough to make them buy a few more.  It also seems likely that many retailers will elect to ‘absorb’ these savings into prices. Also, if your customers are mainly businesses with balanced outgoings then the VAT change is largely neutral.

Either way in what was expected to be a good Christmas for online businesses, despite the Credit Crunch any additional stimulus can only be a good thing – just make sure you save a little back for when taxes go back up in the near future…