Three simple optimizing tricks to speed up your site

July 30, 2007 | 2 Comments

I'm not going to go whipping a dead horse here because optimizing a website's speed has been covered so many times that it is pointless to re-post the same thing all over again.

There is more to making a website faster than just the size of pages or html. Sometimes just changing where a script is called can make more of a difference in website loading time than reducing the overall page size by 50%. Here are a few tricks to speed up the actual loading time of a website without making major changes to the website itself. These are very effective and can be implemented on most websites in just a few minutes.

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Posted by jestep | Filed Under General, Usability 

How to track craigslist ads

July 26, 2007 | 6 Comments

Tracking craigslist ads can be a little tricky because javascript, flash and other useful scripting languagaes are not allowed. It is possible however to track ads using a simple image tracking program. This is limited compared to full-featured javascript tracking script, but it will at least give some idea of the amount of views that your ad is getting.

This should also work on myspace, and other networks that allow html, but do not allow javascript or flash.

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Posted by jestep | Filed Under General, Marketing 

Adding Google Business search to your ecommerce website

July 19, 2007 | 17 Comments

The internet is abuzz with news of Google's new business custom search engine. Google is allowing business sites to have their own custom search engine for $100 per year (<5,000 pages) or $500 per year (up to 50,000) pages. This includes some cool reporting and an XML API so that you can customize to your heart's content.

Google Custom Search

After messing around with Google's javascript code I decided to write my own little script to better integrate it into my website. The javascript code was giving me some major problems with the width of my pages, so I canned it and went to their XML version of the search function.

The following is a very simple php & html script that you can use for your own Google business search engine. It was made for a php5 server as it uses the built-in simpleXML class. Save this in a separate file, configure one or two lines based on your Google search account, use php to include it between in the body of your site, and that's it.

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Posted by jestep | Filed Under Development, Scripts 

10 tips to maximize your ecommerce productivity

July 11, 2007 | 4 Comments

I started this out with five and quickly went to eight and finally split into two five part categories, where I'll stay. This is for the ecommerce businesses that have only one person or just one person that runs all of the online stuff, for webmasters, and for anyone that spends a lot of time developing online. From web design, to marketing, database programming, and shipping, these tips are to help you maximize your efficiency because there just isn't enough time in the day to get everything done.

Personal:

  1. Wear a suit to the office.
  2. Optimize your computer monitor situation.
  3. Make a daily schedule, and stick to it.
  4. Work on one task at a time.
  5. Outsource if you can't do something yourself.

For your website:

  1. Make very good use of FAQ and self help pages.
  2. Properly integrate and automate payment methods on your website.
  3. Make sure you are using a good website host.
  4. Optimize advertising landing pages.
  5. Optimize your website's structure and navigation.

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Posted by jestep | Filed Under General, Usability 

eBay launches craigslist competitor

July 4, 2007 | 1 Comment

eBay formally launched the US version of Kijiji which is a free online classified advertising website, very similar to craigslist, reported PC World.

Kijiji could become a major competitor for craigslist, as it is a free online classifieds website mirroring craigslist in many areas. After only a few seconds, I realized that the usability and features of Kijiji were far better than craigslist in many areas. It offers a cleaner look, and better categorization and the site itself is much faster that craigslist. Currently it is somewhat limited in the cities that ads can be placed in, but I imagine that these will widen once more people start using the service.

eBay currently owns 25% of craigslist which may have played some role in eBay's lack of public announcement of Kijiji, or even the lack of placing an eBay logo on the Kijiji website. Personally, I think that there will still need to be a better marketing campaign to kick this thing off. But a company with as much money as eBay definitely has the funds that could make it go somewhere. Just a few strategic links on the ebay.com would probably be a good start.

Posted by jestep | Filed Under News