A bitter taste in the mouth

We’ve had our first ‘negative’ experience since starting www.LensLocker.co.uk. Not one, but two of our orders did not came back! Obviously we have had a few occasions where parcels have turned up late, nonetheless, in such cases a quick call to the customer has confirmed that the lens or camera has been returned and the delay is with the courier.

Not this time around…..despite all of our efforts we have been not able to contact the customer on the phone, email or letter, and we now have recognized that we’re highly unlikely to retrieve our photography gear.

We’ve spent a couple of days feeling hopeful (maybe they will arrive!), frustrated, disappointed, angry and then very angry! I am now feeling resigned that this type of thing happens and hopeful the police, which are now involved, will have the ability to allow us to resolve this case.

As the whole experience leaves very bitter taste the only factor that we’re certain of is the fact that we must learn from this experience. What will we do in order to minimise the danger without deterring customers from using our services? So what can we provide when it comes to delivery and collection which supplies added assurance our equipment is going to be sent back? What further inspections are we able to do ahead of time to flag potential risks? These are things that have now been pushed very rapidly towards the top of my ‘to do’ list!

Despite this slight setback we still love our business and helping our customers. We’re ongoing to further develop the business and we our expanding our selection of equipment and our stock levels. We take great pride within the service we provide and we’re getting receiving great customer feedback. We are starting new and exciting offers, we are keeping our website fresh with new ad banners and pages and we are working with our designers to ensure we are getting the most from our stock and our website.

And also the best little bit of news now….we hit number two for several key phrases around the search engines like Google – pretty good for a company which is not even 6 months old.

Helpful Tips for Making a Good E-Commerce Website

E-Commerce is the buying and selling of goods and services over the electronic medium like Internet. This is not just all but it has involved so many other major tasks like supply chain management, electronic fund transfer, Internet marketing etc. Having an e commerce web site is not enough these days, but a good, comfortable and amazingly functional website is required. It should appeal to the potential customers only then they would come to the website and make purchases. If even once you fail to provide them good user experience, you will lose the business. As there are hundred of websites available on Internet. There are plenty of choices available to the customers to select the best suitable for themselves. Following are few tips so that you can make your e commerce website a success:

Let the users to explore and do not ask for registration first: Asking the readers to register first and then providing them with the facility of adding items in their cart is probably the major step where you can lose your customers. Allow the readers to explore all the information which he wants to have. Like by adding items, he might be checking the total amount or the transportation fee etc.

Informing the readers where they are: There should be proper headings, sub headings so that if the readers is exploring in the store in more than one sub level of navigation, he can easily come back to his previous position through some kinds of indication like (Home> one category> another category> product etc. )

Do not show unnecessary details unless asked: Simple things are always easy to perceive in the human mind where as we confuse ourselves and even others by giving out unnecessary long details about the product So, the tip is to keep the short basic information about the product as the standard feature of the product and there should always be an option for “looking into more details” if users want to go into.

Give the best visual experience of the product to the readers: The Audio visual aids work many times more than the simple text about the product. Since the readers are not able to touch the product or experience its functionality. So, keeping this in mind provide them with the best of images or any video (if required) so that the readers can have a prior idea about the product before he actually makes a purchase. The images shown should be of high quality and the videos should be clear and audible.

Search options and refinement benefits: When the search has been performed, keep the search bar in front having query in it with the search results so that users can modify their query. Also give your readers the advanced options like to select prices, colors, models etc. facilitating them to make a purchase on the spot.

Customer support: The customers buying online need instant support. The provision of live chat support on every page is a great help that you can provide them with.

Use a prior tested software: You have to check the functionality at every level like browsing, payment options, cart functions etc. so as to give your customers an enjoyable and comfortable experience.

All the very successful e commerce websites like eBay, Amazon.com, are not by chance, but they have provided their users with all the options that makes the shopping experience just superb.!!!

Moving Toward Ecommerce Site Design

Ecommerce has been a major player in the retail market place for more than a decade now. Initially invented in 1979 by Michael Aldridge, a British entrepreneur, the trend only exploded with the widespread popularity of the internet. Industry statistics this year estimate that 44% of consumers will shop online for holiday gifts this year, and as the market share is ever increasing, a number of companies continue to turn to the world of online shopping almost every day. For most companies looking into this type of website, however, there are a number of different concerns that must be addressed before you can ever begin to build a site that attracts customers and promotes sales.

Industries where Ecommerce May be Useful

Before a company ever starts down the path toward online sales, it may be helpful to take a look at which industries get the most out of the process. The answer is a pretty simple one – almost any industry. Take the city of London, for example. Long a mecca of shopping for people around the world, you couldn’t visit this city’s unique shops without actually visiting the UK. With the popularity of ecommerce, however, everything from famed department stores like Harrods to much smaller venues like Honest Jon’s are finding real success in the online marketplace. Whether you market auto parts to do-it-yourselfers or used books, you’re likely to find a home in the world of ecommerce.

The Site Design

Designing your site is key to the process of online shopping. That, however, is the case with any online venture. Customers must be able to find exactly what they’re looking for. Wandering around the forlorn virtual aisles of your e-store will do little but make them abandon their shopping cart and visit a competitor, leaving you without the online sale that is so essential to your bottom line. Here are just a few of the most important tips necessary to help your customers find the product they want:

Keep the Number of Clicks Required to a Minimum: If your customer has to click eight times to buy a single used book, you have a real problem on your hands. Perhaps one click is the search through the various categories. The next click leads them to a category description. From there, perhaps they have to click on a sub category. The process can get endless and frustrating. The rule of thumb is that more than four clicks to the point where they must provide their personal information is unnecessary and can cause a poor buy rate.

Add to Cart or Buy Buttons Must Be Obvious: It’s the first rule of any website design. Your customers have to understand what they are supposed to do, and nowhere is this more true than in an online shopping experience. Your customers should never have to scroll below the fold to find the right button to push to purchase their item from you.

Show the Price: This one may seem like an obvious marker, but many online retailers require more than one click before the potential buyer can look at the price of any given item. If you don’t show them what the item costs immediately, you risk losing them right away.

Find Out How to Optimize Your E-Commerce Website for the Search Engines

If your intention is to use SEO on your e-commerce site, then you should plan to make things work properly. This article will explain to you how it is not that hard to apply SEO to your website.

Be certain that there is a list that talks about your products. Every last one of your products must have its very own unique description. Include the respective primary keywords for the products in this description. Search engines will supply a webpage ranking based upon the information the website provides.

So, by creating a open description, you are helping them to rank your webpages based upon the correct keywords. For every keyword that is optimized on your website, it will be one of the reasons for why your website is receiving targeted traffic from the search engines. It can be compared to owning numerous little streams of traffic that is sent via the search engines and getting it all in one location. Avoid using session IDs when you apply for your e-commerce site URLs. This is because this type of URL is not easy for the search engine spiders to crawl and get indexed. They are not made for the customer’s convenience either because they cannot be bookmarked or save, which means they will eventually run out. So, if you really want to get the most benefit from your website, then you should use URLs that are both search engine friendly and have your particular keywords imbedded in them. This will make it more convenient for the search engine spiders to see it.

Focus on using the product feeds for your e-commerce site to your advantage. If you must absolutely have an example, then use Google Base. Applying this application means you can upload an XML product feed, which will let you show your products via Google Base. This will not only help you to contact your targeted audience, but it will also give your website more visibility. Using the search engines the right way is all about understanding utilizing such fundamental factors and making them work in your favor to get traffic.

Even e-commerce websites can apply SEO the right way and get a high ranking the same way that the huge content sites ca.

Web page scraping, Website Scraping, Web Scraper, web data scrape

Website scrapping which is also called screen scrapping is the process of extracting data from targeted websites using advanced web scraper tools. Website scrapping is done by using automated script or programs which are written using programming languages like Java, Perl, Python etc. Web page scrapping is the solution to handle web data without the need of any manual intervention by using automated tools. Web scrapper is designed for people who find it tedious to manually copy and paste data from thousands of web pages. Web scraper will allow users to scrap data from targeted websites and export the contents to various formats such as MySQL, Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Text format etc.

Web scrapper can help in converting unstructured content from web pages to structured format. Web scrapper can be helpful for extracting product information, online shopping data, news, press releases, contact details, stock quotes and other financial information. Web scraper can gather data or content from business directories, job portals, e-commerce website, search engines and shopping sites. Web scraper will help you save lot of man-hours involved in manual extraction of data and reduce the time taken drastically.

The contents present in websites are present in different formats and structure and in order to gather all information manually we need to copy data from web pages manually and paste them in desired document format. Web scraper can resolved this problem by using advanced web crawling algorithms to extract data from websites.

Web scrapper is nothing but software application which is written to crawl through websites and gather unstructured data from web pages and export them to desired format of our choice. The technical scenario of web scraper is like a human visiting the website by entering the URL and then collection information from web website. Web data scrapper does this job by using advanced crawling algorithms which are implemented using scripting languages like PHP, Perl, Python etc.

Web site scraping is helpful to mine data from web pages to your local hard disks. Web scrapper has a graphical user interface which allows you to designate URL (Uniform resource locator), the data to be extracted and the crawling algorithm to be used for traversing through mined data. Web scrapper can be used at periodic intervals and by using web data scraper you can download an online database to your spreadsheets. Web data scrapper can gather huge amount of unstructured data and convert them to useful format for the purpose of analysis. Web scrappers are used in different business sectors for various purposes like creating leads, establishing marketing strategies based on market analysis, forex analysis, gather stock quotes, product pricing data etc. Using web scrapper, the information required for your business can be gathered from internet.
Web data scrapper can also be used to crawl public email addresses from websites which can be used for creating huge mailing lists for marketing purposes. You can use the mail address for online promotion of your products and sending proposals related to business offers to customers throughout the world. Web scrappers work similar to search engine spiders but are more powerful than that and we can get output in desired format as we like.