Website, from zero to hero

[Dave U]

One more tip:

Hopefully your software has some kind of "Friendly URL" facility. Instead of using http://www.dartsdirect.co.za/index.p...od&productId=5 as a product page URL, it should be http://www.dartsdirect.co.za/Harrows-Assassin, for example. In my experience, google does give some weight to keywords in URLs.

[Pap_sak]

Cheers for those comments dave's.

Dave U - unfortunatly cubecart is not very seo friendly and cannot do anything about the unfriendly URL's. I have to pay to remove the (powered buy Cubecart) - at the moment I am still very much trying it out. Darts and dart equipment are the main keywords I am looking at hitting, with a minor in Harrows! Searching in google (za) it seems to have worked or at least I am up there or thereabouts. I was very interested in your comments about headers - I have always just used font size and not <h1>, will start to do so in future on other sites, unfortunatly this backend does not all that.

There will be more sites, next one I want to experiment with is wordpress with the shopping cart plug in.

[FreelanceZA]

Hey Pap_Sak

Well done! I had a look at your maxsport.co.za website. You have a good selection of products. Have you thought about making it easier for your shoppers to purchase via your website?

[Pap_sak]

Hey Pap_Sak

Well done! I had a look at your maxsport.co.za website. You have a good selection of products. Have you thought about making it easier for your shoppers to purchase via your website?

At the moment I am just playing around - but the idea is the maxsport website is just for the shops, highlighting products that I feel are good value..but then would link to the direct websites for specific sports and for people to buy online.

I have been pretty lazy latley, but will hopefully get more up this week...

Still not sure if one "big" website is better than many small - sports specific websites - is better. I settled on the latter - any ideas?

[Dave A]

Still not sure if one "big" website is better than many small - sports specific websites - is better.

Given the cost of an extra domain, why not do both?

[FreelanceZA]

Pap_sak, I see where you are going with it. Many small -sport specific websites- is an option, it is very time consuming to maintain, re: updating catalogs, maintaining databases, etc.

I would have one big sports website that caters for all sports, that way I'll only have one website to maintain and people will only have to remember one website url for all their sporting needs. I'm just thinking of a parent that has 3 kids, one playing soccer, one darts and the other ballet, for example. This parent will have to remember all 3 different urls when shopping around for sports equipment.

Look at Sportsmans Warehouse, they have everything under one roof, why not implement that as an online business.

[Pap_sak]

Cheers dave and freelance

the darts direct was a prototype (sp?) and, on the whole, seems to get me on most darts related searches ahead of sportsmans, but not all, for instance just the word darts. But dart flights, equipment ect I do pretty well.

The problem is, of course, if I have one item that then needs to be uploaded/ and maintained on three/four websites...for instance thermal/compression undergarments could be on the rugby/cricket/running/hockey website.

Of course, in the future, I will update one database, that then feeds to 10 or so smaller websites....ok, wishful thinking - but could happen lol...(if I wasn't such a lazy git it probably could happen now)

Another plus side is that you have many small, niche sites, that do well in google pointing to each other, which should be a major plus in googles eyes.

It is a tough one, as I could also make lots of arguments for one strong site. But that site would need to be "better" (in programming) than lots of smaller, free, of the shelf offerings than I am putting together, so at the end of the day it does come down to cash as well.

[Pap_sak]

Second sale today, R140 + postage - I am a quick learner, lol

[Dave A]

I've been thinking about what are the issues in the big vs many small website contest. Perhaps it comes down to branding vs SEO.

A single big site stands a better chance of building brand awareness and you can build a following that goes "buying sports equipment online? Go to this site" as opposed to searching with Google which may well favour the more targetted niche site.

[Pap_sak]

I've been thinking about what are the issues in the big vs many small website contest. Perhaps it comes down to branding vs SEO.

A single big site stands a better chance of building brand awareness and you can build a following that goes "buying sports equipment online? Go to this site" as opposed to searching with Google which may well favour the more targetted niche site.

Very true. For the branding I have tried keeping the names to the same format. So there will be hockeydirect, dartsdirect, shoesdirect....which helps to a certain extent.

I think they are better (on the whole) for SEO side, as everything is geared for a few keywords. The big downside, of course, is not getting cross over sales...someone comes on to the dart website but is also interested in a hockey stick. What I might try do is duplicating products on one other website, then just seeing in a year or so what gets the most visits and maybe dumping the small sites.

Had my first return customer yesterday

[IanF]

Pap sak
Your websites got me going and now am ready to launch our own site with die cut paper products like cup cake wrappers. We are busy getting the production side worked out and need to start the website.
Some questions if you have the time. I see hetzner who hosts my site offers osCommerce Shopping Cart and ZenCart Shopping Cart which are open source shopping carts did you look at the open source shopping carts before you chose cubecart.
Anyway I will keep you guys informed of how this goes in a new thread when the website is ready to go.

[Mark Atkinson]

Very interesting. Had a look at the darts and the maxsports sites.

Not bad at all. I definitely think that Cubecart thing isn't the way to go though. It looks like it's more of a mission to use than it is helpful.

For a lot of our sites we use Joomla! With thousands of extensions and a fantastic support forum with over 300000 members, you can't go wrong! Wordpress is great too, but we tend to just use it for sites containing blogs, as this is what it was primarily built for! The max sports site is pretty cool looking though!

Soon we'll be launching our own e-commerce site which deals with t-shirts that are very niche-based. Will let you guys know when it comes into fruition.

I think you will really struggle if you decide to build a bigger site encompassing all the products because you will have far more competition then and even if your page does rank somewhere on the first 3 pages, an unrecognised name is far less likely to convert viewers to buyers than one of the bigger e-commerce sites would be.

You see, even with an unoptimized (for SEO) site, you're still managing to rank on the longer tail traffic. If you optimize your site well enough, that ranking will jump up, I'm sure of it.

Convert all your niche based sites into one that isn't niche-focused, and you're going to have a problem. The problem can be rectified by spending a lot of time on internet marketing and social networking, in order to get the bigger site up the ranking. It will take a lot more effort than you're having to put in for your niche sites though.

Glad to see you're continuously working on it! Congrats on your first few customers!

[tonyflanigan]

@Ian. Imho, osCommerce is the route to take. Until very recently Zen was the Open Source e-commerce platform of choice, but the guys at osCommerce have really pulled their fingers out and are doing some great stuff. Apart from that, I find working the osComm backend easier, and more intuitive than Zen.

@Mark. Some great insights, thanks. I must say that I personally don't dig the Joomla thing too much. Way back when, I started messing with Joomla and Wordpress round about the same time, and for some reason had a mental block with Joomla. Figures can prove anything, depending on how they're used, and right off I need to throw in that Wordpress has had more core downloads than Joomla. WP is not only a blogging platform, although that was its main reason for creation. It is also an incredible cms.

Regarding the size and scope of an e-commerce solution, yes, niche targetting is the way to go. Fortunately Ian is there already.

And in closing (apologies Mark, I am a Wordpress fan. Can't help it.), Wordpress powered sites outperform Joomla with the search engines.

[Pap_sak]

Pap sak
Your websites got me going and now am ready to launch our own site with die cut paper products like cup cake wrappers. We are busy getting the production side worked out and need to start the website.
Some questions if you have the time. I see hetzner who hosts my site offers osCommerce Shopping Cart and ZenCart Shopping Cart which are open source shopping carts did you look at the open source shopping carts before you chose cubecart.
Anyway I will keep you guys informed of how this goes in a new thread when the website is ready to go.

Hi Ian - how was the 10K?

I did look at oscom and zen cart - and found that on default settings that cubecart was the best without having to fiddle too much. I think there are a lot less cubcart sites around, so although not unique, it looks at least a little more bespoke. Standard os com sites are a dime a dozen. Both os com and cubecart are more powerfull than cubecart but you then really need to spend time/or money to get something that looks unique, imo.

I am still not sure which way to go on the sports sites, lots of small vs one big one (besides the SEO side, one big one makes more sense - and wondering if one big site makes it's own "mass" as such), have been working on a site www.sportdirect.co.za as an experiment, just getting lot's of content up and not bothering too much on the finer points...

I still like cubcart, am using the free version 3, the upgrade to vs 4 is $180 as is much better for seo, so am considering it - need to see how easy it is to upgrade though.

[IanF]

Hi Ian - how was the 10K?

I did look at oscom and zen cart - and found that on default settings that cubecart was the best without having to fiddle too much. I think there are a lot less cubcart sites around, so although not unique, it looks at least a little more bespoke. Standard os com sites are a dime a dozen. Both os com and cubecart are more powerfull than cubecart but you then really need to spend time/or money to get something that looks unique, imo.

Papsak
10k was fine, the shoes are a bit too wide on the forefoot so I have to play with making them tighter. But no blisters on the arch so it looks that NB will work for me instead of Adiddas.
For the website I liked the zencart name and they have nice skins but will have a look at OScommerce. Just the one site I use looks home made Brewshop but let me look for skins. Still have to do the logo etc.
The world cup seems to have finished as we just got busy again, I hope it lasts.