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SEO Tips from Practical eCommerce

admin — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 14:10:00 +0000

Another great article from Practical eCommerce magazine. This article focuses on both ‘on page’ (e.g. those factors that can be directly controlled by you, the merchant – also part of PDG’s JumpStart SEO service) and ‘off page’ factors.

Enjoy!

http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/1839-Search-Engine-Optimization-in-2010-What-You-Need-to-Know-Now

Great tips for photo editing

admin — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 13:19:40 +0000

Another great tutorial from our friends at Practical eCommerce magazine – this time on editing your photos to remove backgrounds.

http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/1768-Tutorial-Removing-the-Background-from-Product-Photos

PayPal Instant Payment Notification Warning

pdg-d — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 14:49:26 +0000

We have recieved information from paypal that they have started checking IPN frequently. We have been instructed that our customers should make sure that the IPN address assigned in your PDG Administrator is an exact match to the IPN address assigned in the PayPal account. This includes the http or https in front of the URL.

Also please note that if paypal checks multiple times and continues to return a failed message. Your Paypal IPN could potentially get shut down. So you will have to log into the IPN account and reactivate it in your IPN settings.

An alternative to this is to setup Paypal Pro Express Checkout only. This service acts very similar to IPN because the customer has to log into their paypal account to complete the order. This type of configuration does not require a URL check as does IPN. This service as far as we know only charges you for the money processed. There are no monthly fees for express checkout.

Please note also that Paypal Pro has another service in addition to express checkout called direct pay. This is to process credit cards and does have monthly fees.You only need Paypal Pro Express Checkout and not direct pay.

Be on the lookout – Another “scam” targeted at webmasters to get FTP info!!!

admin — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 16:19:20 +0000

What’s better for a virus writer than infecting a machine that they can use as a bot? Simple, compromising a website that they can use to spread their malware to every users’ PC that visits a site.

Ran across an article at http://voices.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2009/12/phishers_angling_for_web_site.html that talks about a new scam/phishing scheme targeting webmasters in an effort to gain FTP access to their site. BE WARY OF ANY EMAIL THAT ASKS YOU TO VISIT A WEBPAGE IN ORDER TO CONFIRM YOUR CONTROL PANEL/FTP INFORMATION!!!

AIM Returned Unexpected Data

pdg-c — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 17:04:59 +0000

If you are using Authorize.Net ,you may be experiencing intermittent problems on your web site resulting in the message “AIM returned unexpected data.”

Due to formatting changes in the information that Authorize.Net is expecting to receive from your web store, you will need to enable a configuration variable in your PDG Commerce program to correct this problem.

To make this change, connect to your web site using FTP or a file manager program. Browse to the PDG_Commerce folder (usually located in the cgi or cgi-bin folder on your web site). Find the shopper.conf file, and download it.

Save a backup copy of the shopper.conf file, then open it in a text editor. At the end of the file, add the following line:
AIM_AUTHORIZE_V2_AIM_3.1_ONLY=yes

Save the file back to your web site.

You should also view the Authorize.Net settings in your Commerce Administrator and verify that the “Authorize.Net Version” field is set to AIM 3.1.

Please note that this resolution applies to the latest patches of PDG Commerce version 5, PDG Commerce version 4, and PDG Shopping Cart version 4.

Tips to increase conversion and keep customers on your site

admin — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 14:29:19 +0000

Another interesting article from Practical eCommerce about increasing conversions and keeping customers on your site…

http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/1350-Conversion-15-Reasons-Why-Consumers-Will-Leave-Your-eCommerce-Site

Any other suggestions?

Duplicate Content Penalties a Myth?

admin — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 14:50:40 +0000

I ran across an interesting article at Practical eCommerce that proposes that there is no such thing as a duplicate content penalty. I tend to agree with the author that while there are some negatives to having duplicate content (e.g. page rank from links dispersed across all the pages that share the same content), it ultimately appears that each and all of the pages can and do often appear within search engine results.

What do you think?

Automatic IP Blocking for Fraudulent Transactions

pdg-c — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 13:14:56 +0000

By popular demand, PDG Software has added functionality to PDG Commerce version 5 that will automatically block IP addresses after a certain amount of declined transactions have been attempted. You can download the new patch at http://download.pdgsoft.com/download/PDG_Commerce.

To access the new section in your Commerce Administrator, open the “Configuration” menu and select “IP Black List.” Select the “Automatic Deny” tab. You will find the following fields available to you.

Automatic Deny

Automatically block an IP address if they attempt to authorize ___ credit cards in ___ minutes:
Fill in these fields to indicate how many declined transaction attempts are allowed within a given span of time.

Please Enter IP Quarantine Duration:
Enter the number of minutes you would like to use as the quarantine time. Any quarantined IP address will not have access to your web store during this time.

Disabled:
This feature is not currently in use

Quarantine IP Only:
The IP address will be quarantined and not allowed access to your site for the specified duration in minutes.

Quarantine IP and Remove Session:
The IP address will be quarantined and not allowed access to your site for the specified duration in minutes. Additionally, any baskets assigned to that IP address will be deleted from the web site.

Permanently Block IP:
The IP address will be added to the Store Deny list. It can only be restored access to the site if you go to the Store Deny tab and manually remove it from the list.

Purge IP from Automatic Block List:
This field applies to the “Quarantine IP Only” and “Quarantine IP and Remove Session” options. In these cases, the IP address will be quarantined for the specified amount of time. You can use this field to remove a specific address from the quarantine.

Online sales expected to hit $156 BILLION!

admin — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 17:19:15 +0000

Ran across this excellent article at the E-Commerce News site. While they note that online sales are projected to grow 11% and top out at $156 Billion for the year, that the growth rate has shrank from previous years. With the current economic client effecting purchasing decisions of your online visitors, now is the perfect time to revisit your store’s checkout process and make sure that it is optimized for easy and fast buying processes. This article suggests some basics that every ecommerce merchant should visit with regards to their webstores.

http://www.ecommercetimes.com/story/68143.html

Enjoy!

Interesting Article About Flat-Rate Shipping with USPS

admin — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 14:23:21 +0000

I just came across this article on the Practical eCommerce website and thought it might be beneficial for our merchants.

http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/1257-Shipping-Rates-Flat-Rate-Boxes-Usually-Save-Money-

Enjoy!