Aspdotnetstorefront offers lots of great search engine optimization opportunities (including the ability to pretty quickly add Google Analytics tracking to the entire site) which is one of the primary reasons that Beacon selected it as our go-to eCommerce platform many years ago.

However, the resources to set up these items are scattered about a bit, so I thought I’d note specific links I find useful when discussing these topics with clients and/or developers. Hope they are helpful and please be sure to include your own suggestions in the comments section below!

Online User Manual

• Google Analytics and eCommerce Tracking– http://manual.aspdotnetstorefront.com/p-441-google-analytics-and-ecommerce-tracking.aspx (Version ML8) and http://manual.aspdotnetstorefront.com/p-1035-google-analytics-and-ecommerce-tracking.aspx (MultiStore)
• Submitting your Site to Google Sitemaps (Versions ML8 and MultiStore)– http://manual.aspdotnetstorefront.com/p-436-submitting-your-site-to-google-sitemaps.aspx
• Submitting your Sitemap to Yahoo! (Versions ML8 and MultiStore)– http://manual.aspdotnetstorefront.com/p-437-submitting-your-sitemap-to-yahoo.aspx
• Search Engine Optimization– http://manual.aspdotnetstorefront.com/p-505-seo.aspx (Version ML8) and http://manual.aspdotnetstorefront.com/p-1029-seo.aspx (MultiStore)
• A/B Testing with Google Checkout– http://manual.aspdotnetstorefront.com/p-747-ab-testing-with-google-checkout.aspx

Forum posts

• SEO in ASPDNSF– http://forums.aspdotnetstorefront.com/showthread.php?t=17028
• Google Analytics Ecommerce tracking– http://forums.aspdotnetstorefront.com/showthread.php?t=16236

Blog posts

• The Token Analytics Article– http://blog.vortx.com/analytics/the-token-analytics-article/

• Analytics: What’s the Deal With All These Numbers? – http://blog.vortx.com/analytics/analytics-what%E2%80%99s-the-deal-with-all-these-numbers/

• Google Analytics and AspDotNetStorefront– http://blog.vortx.com/analytics/google-analytics-aspdotnetstorefront/

There are a lot of e-commerce web solutions and can be hard to choose from.

We prefer aspdotnetstorefront with its ease of use and great customer support. It provides great integration with new and existing sites and is also customizable with its settings to fit your needs.

You can customize things such as your overall site look and feel, desktop or mobile, change back-end settings in an administration panel to work with your product categories and much more.

Another great feature is that it allows the products to be be setup for multichannel selling to reach a larger audience. There is so much you can do and we can help you every step of the way.

8 Ways to Improve Product Detail Pages

1.       Larger Images – Having bigger images is important because the customer wants to be able to see the product. If they can’t see the product because the image is the size of a thumbnail, chances are they won’t convert. It’s important to not only have big images but also have plenty of images for the customer to look at.  (see above picture for example)

 2.       Product videos – Videos are great for eCommerce sites because they give the customer a better look at the product. Not only are videos great for showing off the product but they also provide a chance for you to talk directly to the customer and tell them more about the product then they can read online.  (see above picture for example)

 3.       Make Your Price Stand out – No matter what the product costs, it is still important to make the price visible and easy to see. A price that is hidden can be aggravating for a customer and could lead to many abandoned carts. It’s better to just show the price right away and make it stand out so the customer knows exactly what the item costs.  (see above picture for example)

 4.       Large Colorful Call to Action Buttons – it’s important to also make it easy for the customer to add the product to their cart or wish list. Having large colorful buttons will make it easier for the customer to know exactly what to do if they want to make a purchase. (call to actions such as “add to cart”, “add to wish list” or “add to favorites” etc)

 5.       Engage Customers with Social Media – Whether you think your customers will use it or not, you should always include social media sharing buttons. This is free advertisement for you if the customer shares. Having a “like”, “pin”, or “tweet” button make it easy for customers to share with their friends if they find something they really like.

 6.       In Stock Notification – Let say you want to keep out of stock products on your site for whatever reason. When a customer comes to your site hoping to find the product they are looking for and then get an out of stock message, it can be frustrating for them. Not only are they upset it’s out of stock but chances are they are going to exit the site at that point and not return. Don’t let that happen. Add an In Stock Notification sign up on the page. Not only will you collect an email address but you’ll also keep the customer happy and coming back to the site.

 7.       Add Color Swatches – Telling the customer how many colors a product comes in is great but showing them is even greater! A customer is more likely to convert if they can see all the choices then if they are just told them. Colors can vary so much which is why showing exactly what the color looks like will help seal a sell.

 8.       Include Customer Reviews – Reviews are great for getting people motivated to buy. If a customer is on the fence about buying the product, a good review might be that small push they need to convert. Reviews can be in the form of comments or ratings. Showing both is ideal because you can show the ratings beside the product and comments at the bottom of the page.

Looking for more great tips about eCommerce? Learn how to improve your eCommerce site, find new ways to shake up your site navigation, and display different pricing with ASPDotNetStoreFront.

Recently one of our AspDotNetStorefront clients asked me to come up with a way to modify the display of his products that vary by price.  One of the things I really like about AspDotNetStorefront is that there are often “hidden gems” or functionality that you might not use one day, but come up with a way to incorporate it later.  For this client, I recommended that he investigate either the product attribute features of a simple product or set up the products with separate variants.

Attribute Option

This is the easiest product setup and, in general, requires the least XML package modification/development, but may not be the ideal user experience, depending upon the type of product being sold.

1. Log into ASPDNSF Admin and search for the product to modify
2. Click on the product and then on the Main tab
   • Change “Color Option Prompt” to the appropriate label to indicate why this product has multiple prices (for example “Product Options”).
   • Change the XML package to product.simpleproduct.xml.config
   • Hit the “Update” button.
3. Go to the Product Variant link, click on the default product variant displayed and then click on the Attributes tab
4. Enter text like this in “Colors” field– “Product Option 1[-100.00],Product Option 2[-50.00],Product Option 3″.  In this example, product option 1 will be $100 cheaper and Product Option 2 will be $50 cheaper than product option 3.  Add as many product types and prices as needed; separate all product options by commas.
5. Hit “Update”  and then view the product on the live site.  Selecting “Product Option 1″ from the drop down should  discount the item by $100 when added to the cart
6. See http://manual.aspdotnetstorefront.com/p-967-varying-price-by-sizecolor.aspx for more info on this setup

Variant Option

Depending on the type of product, I think this is the best looking option for the customer, but sometimes requires modification of the XML package by a developer to display correctly.

1. Log into ASPDNSF Admin and search for the product to modify
2. On the Main tab
   • Change the XML package to product.variantsindropdown.xml.config
   • Save the product with the “Update” button
3. Go to the Product Variant link and clone the default/existing variant using the “Clone” link.  Create as many clones as there will be product options for this product.
4. Click on the first variant in the list.
5. Change the variant name to “Product Option 1” (or other applicable label) and change the price field to the correct price for this product option and then save the variant.
6. Click on each subsequent variant in the list and change the variant product name and price for that product option.
7. Save the product and then view the product on the live site.  Each product variant will appear as a separate choice in the drop down box along with the applicable price for that product variant.

I hope that you find this information helpful!

Way back in 2000, Beacon developed its own ecommerce engine from scratch – “BeCommerce“.  It was during the dot.com heyday and since Beacon was composed of many top-notch developers that had departed Fortune 500 companies, it made perfect sense.  It was designed as a “framework” for ecommerce knowing that customization would nearly always be required.  After 15 years in this business, I can tell you that nearly every ecommerce website has some nuance, some special feature, function or interface that requires custom development and design.

Ecommerce has evolved tremendously since then.  There are so many standard “bells and whistles” that website owners expect.  So a little over 5 years ago, I had a Beacon task force evaluate several ecommerce platforms to consider as an alternative framework for our clients.  Beacon is a primarily a Microsoft shop, so .NET was required.  It had to be easily extendable or customizable, especially with respect to design and interfaces.  In other words, our developers had to be able to get their hands into the code!  The software needed to be complete enough and priced right, out of the box, to make sense for small projects.  Yet it had to be strong enough to support very large clients in terms of volume (traffic/orders), third party integration and custom development.  Of course there were many other pre-defined requirements, but most importantly, we had to have a copy of the source.  Our selection?  AspDotNetStorefront!

As I’ve stated in previous interviews, partner relationships are vitally important and AspDotNetStorefront is another good one.  This is why Beacon has been a long-term Premier Partner and regularly attends & sponsors their User/Developer Conferences out west.  Recently, I chatted with Jo Benson, the COO at AspDotNetStorefront & Vortx to get her take.

MD:  Tell me a little about AspDotNetStorefront (Vortx), the company.

JB:  Vortx, Inc is a company that operates out of Ashland, Southern Oregon. We have been a full-service company in software development since 1990 but in 2005 we made the strategic decision to move into product development and relinquish our strong hold on the service sector. It has taken us eight years of hard work and a significant acquisition, but we now own two very consequential e-commerce products – AspDotNetStorefront and its SaaS sister, EnnyWare.

MD:  What are the main reasons that your customers use or like your product so much?

JB:  If you don’t mind, I’ll answer for the two products separately. AspDotNetStorefront is software that is wholly owned by the retailer. Better (in my humble opinion!) than ‘open source’ – this product offers ‘fully available source’. The truly powerful thing about this software is that a small/medium sized business can grow with this e-commerce platform without limitation. EnnyWare is really very different and hugely exciting. It combines traditional e-commerce (where shoppers are brought to a central online store to do their shopping) with some really amazing ‘social selling’. An online seller who uses ennyware.com can upload each product once and see it for sale on Amazon, Google, Bing, Facebook, Pinterest, eBay Commerce Network ….. AND it can be selling at different prices in all those places.

MD:  What do you see as the most important feature(s) of an ecommerce product? 

JB:  I think that the world of online shopping (notice, I talk about SHOPPING, not SELLING ….. if sellers don’t learn to watch the behavior of shoppers, then they can’t expect to succeed) … anyway, I was saying , the world of online shopping has changed dramatically in the last year. In 2011 most of us went to Google, searched for ‘red shoes’ or ‘fishing rod’ and then started clicking through the top ten results, looking for a product that was affordable and looked just right. In 2013 it is estimated that over 60% of shoppers start their shopping at either Amazon or Google’s shopping engine. In both those places, images of products for sale are lined up side by side for comparison. Oh! And go and look at wanelo.com … it’s a social phenomenon. E-commerce has to stop expecting the shopper to look ‘in-store’. Shoppers find their purchases in social, central places and just need a safe, secure way to checkout. That’s what e-commerce has to match, today.

MD:  Tell me a little about the Beacon-AspDotNetStorefront partnership?

JB:  It was Annette Fowler from Beacon who first came to our attention, and this was before Vortx acquired AspDotNetStorefront. We were all together at an e-commerce conference in Vegas and she was just so SMART and forward-thinking and professional. She stood out as being ‘one to watch’. Therefore when we took over the shopping cart, we actively went looking for her – and therefore for Beacon, in order to make sure that we could bond together. We discovered that Beacon is full of people like Annette and we really value partners of this incredibly high caliber.

MD:  What’s on the horizon for AspDotNetStorefront?

JB:  You’ll see us putting ever more focus on ‘connection’. Not only are we connecting to the shopping and social engines, but we’re working on linking to email marketing solutions, ERP, accounting solutions, catalog management systems. The next release of MultiStore will also have more focus on ‘retention’.

MD:  As you can tell, Jo and her team are constantly looking ahead, using their innovative and creative staff to stay on the front edge of ecommerce.  EnnyWare is an exciting new offering that demonstrates this.  See you in Chicago at IRCE (June) and at your User Conference in Denver in August!

Most companies are in business to make money.  They spend lots of time and funds to create a highly efficient eCommerce website, and then focus on the big picture to create revenue.  However, while focusing on the big picture you should always remember that it’s the small stuff – the little details – that can make or break your transaction conversions.

Listed below are my top 5 tips how to improve your eCommerce website.

1)      KISS- Keep It Silly Simple.  Customers need to be able to find your products.  That being said, make sure your navigation is set up logically, your product detail pages contain breadcrumbs to allow your users to back up easily, and that your site search is quick and serves up recommendations if nothing is matched (or an item is misspelled) with a query entered.  Also, try to incorporate a site search feature that allows for auto-completion of words to help users that can’t remember the exact product name they are looking for.

2)      While most will disagree on online dating sites, looks are so very, very important.  Make sure your product image is flattering.  Don’t have a lot of distractions, and having clothes on a body instead of laid out flat on white table tops allows users to have more confidence in the items they are reviewing.

3)      Show me the money…I mean details.  Including sections on the product detail tabs like online reviews, fabric components, and how items are shipped leave users with a better feeling.  They will also not feel the need to bounce to another site (where they could be easily distracted) to try to find product reviews about your products and brand.

4)      Don’t be shady.  Provide any easy and accessible link to your privacy and shipping policies for customers to find.  Exhibiting and practicing easy return policies will allow users to feel like they aren’t being backed into a corner.  A friend of mine has an online store on Etsy (who I believe has one of the best site policy pages because they give the added bonus of showing the date the policies were last updated).  Also make sure you have obvious ‘contact’ call outs for customers to get in touch with you as needed.

5)      Don’t guess, let the data drive you.  You should all be using some form of analytics to watch your traffic flow through the site to see where they are bouncing and dropping off.  Knowing what sites they are coming from can prepare you to how to market to them.  You can also learn the number of users on mobile devices to make sure your site is user friendly for them, too.

In older versions of AspDotNetStorefront (ML/8 and older), the built-in search functionality does not search the product or category description fields by default.  Though this seems strange, the explanation that I’ve been given in the past by AspDotNetStorefront Support is that this could cause a strain on the server’s performance due to the large amount of text that can occur in these fields.

However, most clients that I’ve worked with really need this data to be searched as well, in order to quickly get the customer to the right product.  Therefore, I always make it a habit to ask a customer when we start an AspDotNetStorefront project whether or not these fields should be included as search fields.  If they say  ”yes” (and they always do), I keep this handy forum post bookmarked and make sure that the developers include this “fix” during the development phase of the project:  http://forums.aspdotnetstorefront.com/showthread.php?17219.

Please note that this may be handled differently in newer versions of AspDotNetStorefront, but it works quite effectively in ML.   Just in case this link ever is disabled, here’s the gist of the post (BE SURE TO BACK UP YOUR DATA AND FILES FIRST!):

If you own the source code and host the database:

Modify the Aspdnsf_GetProducts stored proc, find @extSearch param and change the initial value from 0 to 1.

create proc [dbo].[aspdnsf_GetProducts] @categoryID int = 0, @sectionID int = 0, ………. ………. @extSearch tinyint = 1, ……….. ………..

Re-run the script, just the Aspdnsf_GetProducts so the change will take effect.

If you do not own the source code or have access to the database/stored procedures:

Modify your XML package to set:

,@extSearch = 1

in the <sql> section

Hope this helps!

We are  pleased to announce the launch of a new AspDotNetStorefront site today – Artsy Abode. More accurately, this is actually a new “MoreStore” for the base site we launched last year for Flirties Earrings. Both sites are now administered in the same AspDotNetStorefront Admin, with one additional store being added later this year.

Points of interest on this site:

• Site-Wide
  • Brand-based graphics in site header that link to topic pages maintainable by client in Admin
  • Background color is an appconfig that can be changed by client via Admin simply by adding a new HEX color code!
• Home page
  • Flash home page slide show from original site replaced by a custom Beacon module that is administered in the Admin site
  • Customer favorites section on home page populated by mapping products to the “Favorites” category
  • Promotional graphics (under rotating banner) editable via topic page
• Thumbnail images displayed on search results page (nonstandard functionality for AspDotNetStorefront)
• Enabled product option to display ring sizes: http://artsyabode.com/p-3623-kr01.aspx
• Enhanced store locations page with links to Google maps and maintainable by client in Admin: http://www.artsyabode.com/t-locations.aspx
• Direct integration with Constant Contact for newsletter registration
• We also updated the design a bit and made it more modern and fresh:
  

  Artsy Abode “Before” Shot

Artsy Abode “After” Shot

For all you Demon Deacon fans, be sure to check out the Wake Forest selection! Or the Virginia Tech selection if you absolutely must (kidding- deep office rivalry, if you can’t tell!).

Thanks to everyone involved, but particularly Tiffany May and John Wallwork, who navigated this venture into the MoreStore functionality of AspDotNetStorefront with style!

Let me start off by saying, I’m a big fan of AspDotNetstorefront, have written several blogs about its benefits and features, and have been personally involved in over a dozen site launches or enhancements involving the ecommerce shopping cart. However, as with any out-of-the-box software, there are areas where I think it could be improved and therefore have put together this “wish list”.  Also please note that these items pertain to versions 9.2 and older– they could be addressed in future versions (and as a Custom Development partner, we’ve heard that a number of these items are currently “in the works” and we eagerly anticipate sharing the enhancements with our clients when available!):

1. Reports– Though there are a few reports that come out-of-the-box with AspDotNetStorefront, I wish they were more extensive and customizable.  In addition, most of these reports are “on screen” display only and a “download to CSV” option would be ideal for every report.  I’ve tinkered with the “Custom Reports” option myself, to create a few simple reports needed by my clients, but  unless you have extensive knowledge of SQL and AspDotNetStorefront’s product and order tables (which Beacon’s developers do, I assure you!) you’ll want to stick to simple reports.  Finally, I’ll give a shout out to our friends over at Compunix, that offer a nice variety of add-on reports that we use regularly to enhance our client’s sites.
2. “Getting Started” Documentation– I use the online manual and developer forums for AspDotNetStorefront daily and they are excellent, but I find that all the information is a bit daunting for a new AspDotNetStorefront administrator.  Years ago, the developers provided a PDF with basic installation and administration information, but after it reached 500+ pages, they discontinued its maintenance in favor of online documentation.  Since this basic “how to” resource is no longer available from AspDotNetStorefront, Beacon has written a “primer” on site administration, with just the basic info like creating entities and products, editing topic pages, etc.  It would be nice if a small PDF with just the basics like this was provided out-of-the-box.
3. Hyperlink the product name in Admin “Browse by Category”– This is the smallest, nit-pickiest thing, but if you’ve had to do it 1,001 times like I have, you’ll appreciate the issue.  In Admin, when you choose to look for a product by browsing the category (Organization, Manage Categories, click on Category name, click on Products tab).  First, you have to click on “Show Selected Only” (see next bullet) and then, even though a list of the products in the category is there for you, you can’t actually click on any of the products to see their product pages.  You have to copy/paste the product name or SKU into the search box and search for the product and then you can click on the product page.
4. Show Selected Only– Directly related to the item above and similarly nit-picky, when you browse to a list of products via the Category, you have to manually click on the “Show Selected Only” checkbox to filter out the products that are NOT in that category.  Huh?  This is actually a simple customization that we’ve done several times to automatically have this box checked by default, but it should really come this way by default.
5. Hide Seldom Used Topic pages– This is an example where AspDotNetStorefront is giving us TOO much functionality.  By default, there are dozens of topic pages listed in the “Manage Topics” list in Admin, only a small fraction of which will ever be used by a “normal” small business.  While I love to be able to enable these when needed, it makes for an unwieldy list for a new administrator.  Could these be separated into “frequently used” (like hometopintro) and “other pages” so that the initial list is not so daunting?
6. Test Publishing Environment — I’m really reaching here, but it would be so nice to be able to update a product or topic page and publish it to a Test environment first, before releasing it to the public site.  I’ve been known to make ugly HTML errors from time to time, and I just hate to have them shown on the public site, even for a second.  We accomplish this at Beacon by having a totally separate Test installation of AspDotNetStorefront for every site, so that theoretically, a client could go to the Test site first, enter their update in the product/topic page, check how it looks at the Test URL and then copy/paste the HTML version to the Production site.  But this is laborious for a small change.  Being able to view a “test” version of the page before publishing would be ideal.
7. Include “product description” as basic sort field– By default, the basic AspDotNetStorefront search includes the following fields:  Product Name, SKU, Manufacturer’s Part number.  I’ve never had a client that didn’t want the basic search to also include Product Description.  Again, this is a simple customization and we do it frequently, but it doesn’t make sense to me why it isn’t included as search criteria in the first place.  Perhaps there’s a concern that it might cause a performance issue due to additional data, but if your server or database can’t handle an additional value like this, you have other issues going on.

Anybody else have a “wish list” item to include?  Please share… Maybe someone at Vortx is listening/reading!

Recently, I needed to be able to clear a single site’s cookies on my computer in order to test an issue that a client was reporting.  I certainly did NOT want to clear all cookies on my computer, which is the default and easiest method for most browsers (how would I remember those thousands of passwords that I have stored everywhere??), and it took a little searching on how to do this in each browser for just one site.  Hopefully you’ll find this list useful as well!

• Google Chrome: http://support.google.com/chrome/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=95647
  1. Click Chrome menu on browser toolbar
  2. Select Settings
  3. Click Show advance settings
  4. Click Content settings in Privacy section
  5. In Cookies section, select the site that issued the cookie, then the cookie, and click Remove
• Firefox:  http://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/delete-cookies-remove-info-websites-stored#w_delete-cookies-for-a-single-site
  1. Click Firefox button or Tools menu, then click Options
  2. Select Privacy panel
  3. Set Firefox will: to “Use custom settings for history”
  4. Click Show Cookies
  5. In the search field, type the name of the site whose cookies you want to remove.
  6. Select the cookie in the list to remove and click “Remove Cookie”
  7. Click “Close”
• Internet Explorer 9:  http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/ie/forum/ie8-windows_other/i-want-to-selectively-delete-cookies-in-windows-7/ac10aa92-6919-40b2-a8c7-06a4fe184b6c (NOTE: Though hosted on a Microsoft website, this response was from a non-Microsoft employee, but I couldn’t locate an applicable Support document)
  1. Click on Tools, Internet Options
  2. Under Browsing History, click Settings
  3. Click View Files
  4. Locate the cookies to delete, right click and then click Delete

For all this info in one nifty page with nice screenshots:  http://www.howtogeek.com/111925/delete-cookies-in-the-five-most-popular-web-browsers-in-windows