Ambient and Transparent

In the last few weeks we completed work on migrating a couple of clients sites from an old content management system to a new one, and man it took some really effort to get it done! We had a thorough website migration plan in place and the execution went fairly well (although we had some minor glitches but those were manageable). I thought to share the outline of the migration plan with our blog readers.

Before migrating to a new site you should assess and measure the performance of the old site in using various data sources including the analytics tool implemented on the site (e.g. Google Analytics). Below you’ll find few reports that could guide you in what areas of the old site requires more attention in migration.

Traffic sources:
Referring traffic: we recommend you create pages with the same URL structure (or use 301 redirects) so that the referral traffic doesn’t end up with a page not found (bad user experience).

Top organic keywords: review the keywords that are bringing you organic traffic (and potentially conversions) and have a plan to ensure that you’ll continue to rank on such keywords and more importantly get traffic from this ranking (make sure you migrate title and meta tags, pay attention to all SEO factors that led to your ranking, etc).

Content:
Top content: you might want to transfer these pages from the old site to the new site without any changes, especially if these pages were bringing good traffic (traffic that had low bounce rate, relatively high conversion, etc).

Top exit pages: take this opportunity to improve these pages as you transfer them to the new site.
Site overlay: it will help you to identify which sections on the web page attracted clicks (and clicks that led to achieving site objectives), and accordingly great care should be taken into migration these sections.

Site search:
Usage: Identifying the number of people using the site search will help you in deciding placement of the search box and possibly upgrading to a more sophisticated search feature.
Search terms: you could use the search terms that visitors type as a way to understand the customer intent and thus making what people are searching for very prominent or easily accessible on the new site.

Goals:

Reverse goal path: It will identify which pages lead visitors to convert. (these pages should be transferred to the new site with a lot of attention).

Funnel visualization: It will help you identify pages that need improvement (pages where visitors exited the funnel).

The above points are just some sample reports you might want to run and provide useful data to your design and implementation teams.

written by Feras Alhlou \\ tags: site logistics

Site migration doesn’t have to be difficult. If you can take care of a few small tasks along the way, you can make life for the search engines and your users much easier, as well as transferring value from the old site to the new one.

• You will want to have redirect pages with links to the same content on the new site that people can click on and search engines can follow
• Create an attractive error page that will keep visitors from leaving when, not if, they run into pages that no longer exist
• Have a robots.txt file in the root of the website that will allow search engines to crawl freely
• Build all your links to point to either the www version of the site or the non-www version of the site, not both!

For more information on website migration and search engine optimization, feel free to contact E-Nor.

written by Rehan Asif \\ tags: search engine optimization

Client Background/General Information

1. e-Commerce Knowledge
Implemented an eCommerce solution previously?
–> If yes,
- The name of the solution?
- Was the solution implemented in house or with a web development company?
- Was the solution maintained (e.g. products uploaded) in house or through a web development company?
–> If no, level of familiarity with eCommerce?
- Very familiar
- Somewhat familiar
- Not familiar

2. Is the client replacing an existing eCommerce solution?
- Why?
- What features not working?

3. Client infrastructure
- Where products are produced, packaged & shipped?
- Describe existing non-eCommerce, sales and fulfillment cycles

4. Design Preferences
- Template Design (inexpensive, quick-turnaround, non-unique look & feel)
- Custom Design (expensive, 4+ weeks at least, unique look & feel)

5. Timeline
- Fastest way to deployment:
- Out-of-the-box solution (no custom development whatsoever)
- Template Design
- Client readiness (content, images, infrastructure, payment gateway, etc.)

Identify all aspects of eCommerce
A. Products
- How many products?
- How many categories?
- How many sub-categories?
- Do products come in various styles (e.g. difference colors, different sizes)
- Do you have all product description, images, pricing available?
- If yes, what format (e.g. hard copy, excel spreadsheet, etc.)
- If no, is all the information accessible form a third party?

B. Product updates
- How often do you update your product info (description, pricing, images, etc.)?
- How is product information gathered (manual, catalog, etc.)?

C. Shipping
- Do you have a preference for a shipping carrier, Fedex, UPS, USPS, Royal Mail or others?
- How do you intend on charging for shipping
- How do you intend on processing shipping, using a carriers integrated tool (e.g. UPS WorldShip)

D. Taxes
- Do you have any specific taxes requirements

E. Payment Processing/Online payment gateway
a. Do you have an existing online payment gateway?
i. If yes, please list
ii. If no, do you have a preference which gateway to use (authorize.net, VeriSign, WorldPay, HSBC, etc.)

F. Languages
- The solution default language is XYZ. Do you require your eCommerce solution to support more than one language, if so, please list.

G. Customer types
- Retail?
- Wholesales?
- Others (e.g. members)?

H. Pricing
- What is your pricing model?
- Volume Pricing?
- Do you offer different pricing for each customer type?

I. Inventory
- Inventory Management System?
- Do you intend on integrating the eCommerce solution with your Inventory Management system?

J. Accounting
- Accounting System?
- Do you intend on integrating the eCommerce solution with your accounting system?

K. Ordering
- Do you require the capability of ordering from the system admin interface?

L. Order fulfillment
- Do you manage and ship products in-house or through a third party?
- If you use a third party, do you require an automated integration with the third party?

M. Reports
- In addition to customer and products reports, are there any additional reports required?

N. Feature set
- Favorite Products
- Related Products
- Feature Products
- New Products
- Wish list
- Gift Certificate
- Gift Wrapping
- Multi-currency
- Login/account information/previous orders
- Search
- Others?

O. Other features - Do you plan on having:
- Auction
- Gift Registry
- Download on Demand
- System Admin ordering interface
- Others?

P. How do you plan on marketing the business?
- Do you intend on implementing Search Engine Optimization (SEO) on your site? (to allow for SEO friendly pages and other SEO considerations)
- Other Internet Marketing programs such as Pay-Per-Click, e-mail marketing, banners?
- How do you currently market the business offline? Have you considered Integrated Marketing Solutions to maximize your ROI?

Q. Post Project Considerations
- Web Hosting requirements: look for reliable eCommerce, secure hosting
- On-going eCommerce solution updates and website maintenance

written by Team Marketing \\ tags: site logistics

Maybe you have been tempted to buy more than one domain name for your web presence, although this most probably will not lead to increase your Search Engine Rank, it could be helpful for other reasons.

One of these reasons could be protecting your brand, if you own wsinetsense.com you might want to buy wsinetsense.net and maybe wsi-netsense.com or even wsi-net-sense.com to prevent others from building their website on your successful brand that you have worked hard to build.

Another reason could be getting similar names that your clients could type in by mistake when trying to get to your site like wsiwebsense.com using web instead of net. Also buying a misspelled version of your domain could be a good addition to your multiple domain selection, like wsinetsence.com, or wsinetcense.com both of these techniques will provide you with a way to catch clients that didn’t get the name right, forgot the exact name, or typed it wrong.

Also, getting a domain name for a specific local area or a specific industry could be a good option if you think it will stick to your clients’ mind better or it will give you an edge over your competitors. An example would be if you are targeting clients in a specific geographic area, you could add that area name in front of your domain and use that domain name in the marketing material in that area, like if we are only targeting the bay area we can buy BayAreaWsiNetSense.com or if you are in the limousine business and your domain name is LimoServices.com you might want to get SanJoseLimoServices.com to target the local clients. The same is true if you are targeting a specific industry where you can use the name of the industry in your domain name to let your client know that you are specialized in that industry, as an example we can use WSINetTravelsense.com if we are targeting the travel industry.

Finally, getting a similar domain for a specific use or purpose is also a valid option, this specific use could be a support site, a store website, a discussion group site, or even for a separate blog

For the above reasons except the last one you should use a redirect mechanism where all of your multiple domains would redirect the visitor to your main website, there is more than way to do this (Ex: HTML, JavaScript, VBScript..), but a pure domain redirect with your domain registrar could be the best option. Here you request that any traffic going to that domain be redirected to your main domain. The only exception of the redirect rule would be if you acquired the new domain to host a different site for a specific reason like a blog as we mentioned above then you would need a separate site and separate hosting package since the visitors will go a totally different site.

Contact E-Nor today for all of the latest tips and news on the latest domain name tips for your business or organization and setting up an premium hosting environment.

written by Team Marketing \\ tags: marketing strategy, tips for internet consultants