Types of Searches

Transactional Searches

Transactional searches imply intent to purchase. Sometimes, this will take the shape of keywords such as “Samsung S4″ or even “Buy Samsung S4″. The “Buy” isn’t required to be considered a transactional search, although it definately implies intent to purchase.

Informational Searches

An informational search is just what the name implies; a search for information. Searching for “Cell Phone” indicates the searcher is looking for information about cell phones. Not necessarily to purchase one, the searcher is likely gathering information. For a site, this is an opportunity to be the authority or trusted source for information related to cell phones.

Navigational Searches

A Navigational Search is to find a site. Hopefully we all rank for our own company name. A searcher enters a company name or domain name such as facebook or IBM. This is the least important search type for ecommerce.

Ecommerce SEO to increase sales

Combining Transactional and Informational searches can be an incredibly powerful strategy. Each type will bring customers at different stages in the purchasing process.

Informational searches can be beneficial for ecommerce sites. If the site is considered an authority, expert or trusted source that also sells product it should do well when a consumer is ready to purchase. But keep in mind, the consumer isn’t a consumer when they visit a site via an informational search. They are gathering information for a future purchasing decision.

Transactional search queries will bring real consumers, a visitor who is ready to purchase. Now, imagine that a consumer has arrived at your site for the second, third or fourth time. The first visit because they wanted to learn about “cell phones”; then because they are trying to purchase a “Samsung S4″. Do you think they will trust the site more? See the site as an authority? Familiarity with the site will result in higher conversions.

What’s the Secret

So, what is the secret to Ecommerce SEO. Do you really think I’m going to tell? Well, you’re right. I will! Well, at least some of it. We know the types of searches. We know which one’s matter for ecommerce.

The next post will go over Ecommerce SEO strategies that will increase rankings and conversions.

Introduction

Having social icons that scroll with the page as the user scrolls can keep your visitors engaged and increase your conversion rates. Recently, a client of ours requested that we add this feature to all of their sites. I was tasked with the implementation, and I found it much simpler to do that I had originally thought. Since it was so easy, and because I love giving back to the community, I have decided to share my work with you in the hope that you might benefit from it and learn something useful. Please note that this tutorial assumes that you have at least a basic working knowledge of HTML, CSS, and jQuery/JavaScript. If you would like us to implement this for you or need any other type of development work done, do not hesitate to contact our team.

Social Icons

Before beginning this tutorial, you will need some social icons for the services that you are using. Ours came from the client, but you can find some excellent freebies listed at social-icons.com or via a quick Google search. Whatever icon set you choose, make sure that it contains the right size images to fit in with your layout. We advised the client to use 48×48 icons as they fit best with the layout of the target Web sites.

Our demonstration page makes use of a set from Azmind.

HTML

Semantically speaking, we are making a list of social icons so it makes sense to use an unordered list here. Each list item represents an individual social icon.

<ul id="social-icons">
    <li><a href="https://www.facebook.com/{username}" title="Like us on Facebook" target="_blank"><img src="/images/social-icons/facebook.png" alt="Facebook" width="48" height="48" /></a></li>
    <li><a href="https://twitter.com/{username}" title="Follow us on Twitter" target="_blank"><img src="/images/social-icons/twitter.png" alt="Twitter" width="48" height="48" /></a></li>
    <li><a href="http://instagram.com/{username}" title="View our pictures on Instagram" target="_blank"><img src="/images/social-icons/instagram.png" alt="Instagram" width="48" height="48" /></a></li>
    <li><a href="http://pinterest.com/{username}" title="Pin us on Pinterest" target="_blank"><img src="/images/social-icons/pinterest.png" alt="Pinterest" width="48" height="48" /></a></li>
    <li><a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/{username}" title="Watch our videos on YouTube" target="_blank"><img src="/images/social-icons/youtube.png" alt="YouTube" width="48" height="48" /></a></li>
    <li><a href="https://plus.google.com/{userId}/posts" title="Follow us on Google+" target="_blank"><img src="/images/social-icons/google-plus.png" alt="Google+" width="48" height="48" /></a></li>
</ul>

Be sure to replace {username} and {userId} with your username or id for each profile as well as update the image paths to match the locations of your icons. Adjust the width and height attributes to match those of your icons if you are using a different size.

CSS

{parent} {
    position: relative;
}
#social-icons {
    list-style: none;
    z-index: 70742;
    position: absolute;
    top: 70px;
    right: -70px;
    background: transparent;
}

Replace {parent} with the id or class of the containing element (for example #wrapper, .container or body) and adjust the top and right position rules as necessary.

jQuery

Note: The following code has been tested under jQuery 1.9 but should be compatible with version 1.7 or greater. Place this code in the footer of your page before the closing <body> tag.

(function($) {
    var $socialIcons = $("#social-icons"),
        originalTop  = parseInt($socialIcons.css("top"), 10);

    $(window).on("scroll", function() {
        var windowTop = $(window).scrollTop();

        $socialIcons.stop().animate({
            top: windowTop > originalTop ? windowTop : originalTop
        });
    });
})(jQuery);

How does this code work? First we get the #social-icons element as a jQuery object along with its top position as previously set in the CSS. Next, we hook into the scroll event of the window object that is fired when the user moves the scroll bar in their browser. Our callback gets the top position of the visible viewing area (or “viewport”) in the browser and stores it in a variable for easier reuse.

Now for the fun part: the animation. We call the stop() method to give any existing animations a chance to finish before starting a new animation in order to prevent any sort of jerkiness from happening. For this particular animation, I decided that it was best to use the top property hence the need for the position: absolute and top rules in the CSS. (animate() works by taking a CSS property to start from and changing its value to whatever is specified.) The code checks to see if the top position of the viewport is greater then what the top of the element was initially set to and if so moves the element to the top of the viewport or otherwise back to its original position. This prevents the element from being positioned higher than where it started.

Bonus

Any element can easily be made scrollable using this technique, which is why I providing a small plug-in that includes this functionality which can be downloaded here. To use it, just call $("element").stickyfy(). This plug-in accepts the same options as the animate() method.

Conclusion

I hope that you have enjoyed reading this tutorial as much as I enjoyed writing it. The code presented here can be used for any purpose, not just animating social icons. Found an interesting use for it? Let us know by posting a comment describing what you have done with this code!

Legal

The code found in this tutorial is provided as-is without any express or implied warranty of any kind, including but not limited to any warranties of merchantability or fitness of a particular purpose.

Sites that sell consumable products have a great opportunity to drive sales using recurring payments. Magento’s recurring profiles allow a store to schedule orders in advance. Giving a discount for a guaranteed sale isn’t for everyone, but it is an option available to you as well.

Magento’s recurring profiles (or recurring payments) use PayPal to schedule orders in advance. There are also third party extensions that use tokenized payment gateways to perform the same function, such as our Authorize.net CIM Recurring Payment, BluePay Recurring Payment and FirstData Recurring Payment extensions.

Magento recurring payments make sense if you sell products ranging from skincare to pet treats—items that are consumable and can be scheduled with a certain frequency. We’ve all heard of the book of the month clubs. Magento recurring profiles is the same concept. Each sale is billed and invoiced separately, so there is no need to worry if a payment has been charged successfully. Most third party extensions will allow the ability to edit payment methods while a recurring profile is in progress.

The process of setting up a Magento recurring profile is straightforward. The key to understanding them is knowing when they can and cannot be used. It’s a pretty simple rule: only Magento simple products can be used for recurring profiles.

To set up a recurring profile, first create or edit a simple product in Magento. If you are using version 1.4.1 or higher, you will find a tab on the left side labeled ‘Recurring Profile’.

Set Enable Recurring Profile to Yes.

Magento Recurring Profile Schedule Settings

Setup the schedule of the payments. There are four settings in the schedule.

1. Customer Defined Start Date: Do you want to allow the customer to set the start date? If so, set to yes. Otherwise, set to No. If set to No, the start date is the date of purchase.
2. Schedule Description: Provide a nice human friendly short description. This is shown on the customer facing side. The user will see this when they order the product.
3. Maximum Payment Failures: Do you want to allow payment failures? If you do, set the number of payment failures. If not set, the profile will cancel itself on the first failed payment.
4. Auto Bill on Next Cycle: If set to Yes, Magento will attempt to charge the card for the number of missed payments the next time it attempts to create an order. If set to No, each time the recurring profile fails, the subscription will be elongated by the Billing Period Unit (more on that soon).

Magento Recurring Profile Billing Settings

Each Magento recurring profile has billing settings. These tell Magento how often and when a profile will be purchased.

1. Billing Period Unit: What are the units we’re billing by, Days? Months? Years?
2. Billing Frequency: How many billing period units are in the recurring profile. If the idea is to create a yearly subscription, then you would enter 12 for the frequency and Month for the period unit.
3. Maximum Billing Cycles: is there a limit on how long the recurring profile will continue. If this is empty, the recurring profile will only end when the user or an administrator cancels the profile.

Magento Recurring Profile Trial Period Settings

The ability to setup a trial period gives marketers the ability to discount their product without lowering prices—a ‘Buy 12 months and get the 13th free!’ type of deal. Magento allows the customer to cancel a recurring profile at any time. Offering a trial period should be used cautiously.

1. Trial Billing Period Unit: What is the billing unit you wish to give away?
2. Trial Billing Frequency: How many periods are contained in the trial? This can be set to any number.
3. Maximum Trial Billing Cycles: When will the trial billing cycle end. Will it happen once? Twice? Is it never ending?
4. Trial Billing Amount: What is the amount you wish to charge? If the monthly recurring profile is $10, entering $5 has the effect of offering the trial period at a discount of 50%.

Magento Recurring Profile Initial Fees

A marketer may add a one-time initial fee to the recurring profile. This would be useful for situations where there is some setup overhead involved when the order is initially placed. For instance, you might charge $50 on a monthly basis, plus a $200 one-time setup fee.

1. Initial Fee: The additional fee to be charged on the start date of the recurring profile. This fee is NOT recurring. It will be charge only one time during the life of the recurring profile.
2. Allow Initial Fee Failure: If yes, the recurring profile will continue even if the first payment was unsuccessful. It may be a good idea to leave this ‘no’ to immediately suspend the recurring profile.

Nic Del Mar came to ParadoxLabs with a challenge to optimize there customers overall shopping experience. The site has a simple elegant design but Jeanette and Lyanne wanted to provide the most efficient, easy to navigate experience for their customers. The ParadoxLabs team took the challenge and dove in upgrading there outdated version of Magento Commerce and providing a wide range of layout and functionality changes, decreasing slow load times and optimizing product pages layouts, and navigation.

Magento Commerce continues to be a powerful tool for Nic Del Mar, but also for Nic del Mar’s brother company, Yellowboard, providing a platform that celebrates design-driven styles while remaining true to the real surf culture.

People nowadays expect companies to have a website, and this expectation will only continue to increase over time. They want a website that can provide them with at the very least some basic information about the company and a way of getting in contact. In fact, most people turn to their computers to find your business before they’ll look in the yellow pages, and if you don’t have a website for them to find, you can be sure that one of your competitors will.­­­­

In addition to finding information, more and more people are beginning to shop online. It’s convenient, easily accessible, and doesn’t drive customers away by having to deal with pushy sales representatives. Many sites also allow users to read reviews written by other customers about the products they have purchased, rather than having to determine if the store’s salesman has their best interest at heart or is instead simply trying to make a sale. Having an e-commerce website to sell your products over the internet can allow you to reach a much wider audience while being able to sell your products twenty-four hours a day, 365 days a year.

Some people prefer not to shop online, but still use various websites to research products or services they are interested in. If you don’t have a website, these potential customers may not even consider your business and will only work with the companies that they have already researched online through their respective websites.

Having a website can allow you to expand your business with the potential to reach many more customers.  If you are a local company, imagine being able to reach customers on the other side of the country, or even on the other side of the globe!

Web space is much cheaper than print advertising and you have lots and lots of space to work with. And unlike a printed advertisement, its content is much easier to change and keep updated.

So if your company is currently lacking a crucial aspect to your business, consider expanding onto the World Wide Web, it will add value and credibility even if your company is still young or small. Stay ahead of the competition and don’t wait for the disadvantages of not having a website to rear its ugly head. Don’t allow your company to become forgotten. Consider adding a website to your business today!

While Magento can be a bit scary and frustrating at first, it can make setting up an e-commerce site a much easier task to handle. And as you’ll discover, with some practice and experience in the world of Magento, theming no longer has to be a daunting task, but rather an exciting new way for you to easily set up the beginnings of a powerful and successful ecommerce website.

Partnership and design by:LaunchDM

HatchLiving uses Magento Commerce to mange products and categories, create a usable user interface, create an easy to navigate order process and extensive upgrades to standard eCommerce functionality.  All of this while giving them a stable platform for growth in the future.