There are so many how to guides that people need for running their ecommerce website’s. With that in mind, this is a list of very useful how to’s related to ecommerce. Hopefully this post will be a good resource for site owners, and those looking to get into ecommerce. Topics include everything from setting up a web server, marketing, to integrating a website with a payment gateway.

Please send me some feedback if there are some good how to’s that should be on here.

Servers / Networking / Programming Setup:

• The perfect Fedora 5 server setup – While I don’t like the virtual control panel that the guide recommends at the end, this is a perfect step-by-step guide to setting up a Fedora 5 Linux server. This guide covers setup for PHP5, mysql, SSL Support, ProFTP, and a few others. The guide states that it is for 64 Bit systems, but I have setup five, 32 Bit systems without any additional modification.
  Fedora Core 4, Fedora Core 3 setups are also available.
• Setup a Windows XP Web Server – Also php.net has an excellent guide on the overall steps to setup php and Apache on windows. The php.net version tends to leave out some things that later may cause errors, but the comments section of the article probably cover all of the missing information.
• Windows XP Apache Virtual Hosting – Having needed to setup a Windows XP server recently, this guide covers both the setup, and how to use virtual hosting on the server allowing multiple websites to exist at the same time. I have a company server that was setup using this and the previous guide running several websites, very effectively.
• How to make Cat 5 / 5e Patch Cable – I’ve saves myself a few hundred dollars in under a year, by making all my own Ethernet patch cable. You can get cat 5e cable and connectors really cheap when you buy them in bulk. If you think you may be needing a lot of cable in the future, this is the way to go. It may take a few tries to get your cables nice, but once you get it down, you cables are just as good as anything.
• 13 *nix command line tricks – A quick tutorial on a few command line codes that are very useful but often not known, not used, or one’s that we forgot.
• Top 5 PHP security holes – After running a server scan I was referred to this excellent resource on the major security problems that websites commonly have with php. Since almost all of these problems are due to use error and poor programming, they are all fixable.
• Integrate Linux PHP with a MSSQL database – After working on a few of these integrations, one successfully, and one failing, this is the best overview on the topic that I have found. Easysoft.com also has another good guide, but it is geared to using their own paid extension, which is expensive. I don’t recommend performing this integration unless you absolutely have to (Just save yourself the time, and switch the site to a windows server), but these should get you pointed in the right direction.

Web Design / Hosting / Usability:

• How to make a horrible Oscommerce site – From Jason Chance, this is a great, humorous guide on how not to make your oscommerce website.
• 10 Ways to ruin visitor experience on your website
• 10 easy steps to a horrible ecommerce site – Another from Jason on sitepoint.com, this is an extension of the oscommerce version, and covers mistakes that all websites should avoid.
• B2B Usability – From Jakob Nielsens Alertbox, a guide to usability from a B2B vs. a B2C standpoint.
• Top 10 mistakes of web design – One more from Dr. Nielsen, on the top 10 mistakes that website creators make. Weblog mistakes is another valuable article for blog owners out there. I admit that ‘Irregular Publishing Frequency’ is one that I rarely adhere to…
• Shopping Cart Abandonment – Don’t do this… – 3 simple tips to lowering shopping cart abandonment rates.
• How to ruin a web design – This is a good article covering how to not over think a design project, and that often more people working on something means less quality.
• How to choose a web host – This is a good overview to help people that aren’t quite sure what they need, pointed in the right direction in choosing the company to host their website.

SEO and Marketing:

• How to Conduct Keyword Research – This is a great introductory guide on finding relevant keywords for a SEO or PPC campaign.
• 5 most common SEO mistakes – 5 simple SEO mistakes that are often overlooked.
• Ultimate guide to link-baiting and social media marketing – From one of the most authoritative persons on link building anywhere, Andy Hagens tells us how to properly build linkbait. I would consider this the definitive guide to linkbaiting. What is linkbaiting you say?
• List of the best directories – This is the best list of web directories out there. Directories are separated by value, and prices are listed next to each directory.
• How to market to other business owners – From entrepreneur.com, this is my ’7 commandments’ on marketing B2B products and services. I highly recommend printing this one out and looking it over any time you need to deliver a message to a B2B audience.
• How to add $1 Million in revenue to your business in 1 year – From Andy Beal at marketingpilgrim, this is written with an SEM agency as the intended industry target, but it can be applied in theory to almost any ecommerce business.
• How To Generate Targeted Site Traffic Without Search Engines – This is an awesome guide on building traffic without completely relying on search engines for it.
• Top 10 business mistakes, marketing firms make – Another from marketing pilgrim, this can also be applied to just about any business.

Payments:

• Six Payment Gateways Reviewed, The Chargeback Challenge, and Solve the Payment Processing Problem are all written by John Conde from the merchant-account-services.org blog. These are all great articles and should be considered essentials for website owners looking to accept credit cards on their website.
• How to accept credit cards on your website – This is a simple guide that I wrote a few months ago covering basic option to accepting payments online.
• Integrate a website with Authorize.net using php 5

Other / random useful stuff:

• Microsoft Windows Power Toys – If you don’t know what these are, check them out. Extremely helpful, and can safely change a lot of things on your computer that you couldn’t before. I highly recommend the Tweak-UI, Clear Type, Virtual Desktop, and the Image Resizer toys.
• Magazines for small business owners This is an article covering some good business magazines for print and online for business and website owners.

Web Server Control Panels:

• Plesk
• cPanel
• Webmin
• cube panel
• CWIPanel
• ISPConfig

Getting Information (Where I go when I need help):

• Digitalpoint Forum
• Sitepoint Forum
• Webmasterworld
• WebProWorld

Freelance Marketplaces (If I need programming/ design work):

• GetAFreelancer – #1 choice
• Rent A Coder

If you know of any really good how-to’s or guides for ecommerce do-it-yourself’ers send them to me. I may add them to the list.

A while back I found a table that compared the click through rates of Natural and PPC search traffic. I cant seem to find the original source any more, so my apologies for not citing the source of this information, although it was a reputable source.

I have placed the data from that table into an easy to follow graphic model of a common search engine result page.

To put it simply, if you are only marketing to the natural search or the PPC search environment, you are loosing out on a huge potential percentage of visitors. Most search marketers will agree that a marketing campaign should be split between natural search marketing, PPC marketing, and other mediums of advertising on the Internet. Even if you have a #1 ranking for a search phrase, you could be loosing 50% or more of your potential customers to those that click on PPC listings.

Obviously this data may not be appropriate for every situation, such as non-commercial sites, sites that have no budget and by some miraculous event have top search engine ranking, or sites that rank high naturally but have ridiculously high PPC competition and cost per clicks.

Otherwise, I think it is almost always best to spread out a marketing budget. Work some on a long term SEO campaign for natural rankings, and work some with a short term PPC campaign. Having success in both PPC and natural search areas can make the difference between an ecommerce website, and a very successful ecommerce website.

A word of caution about the #1 PPC spot.
In my experience the #1 spot on any high traffic PPC listing will get you a large bill and a lot of worthless clicks. If you do decide you want this spot and you’re advertising for high cost per click and / or high volume search phrases, you should track your campaign very carefully to ensure you get a positive return from it. I have seen companies burn through tens of thousands of dollars in a few days without anything to show from it, by going for the #1 spot on a high traffic broad search phrase.

Now, the Pay per click campaign so far has been the most successful that I have done in the last three years, so I am very happy with the results thus far. However, I am not happy with AdWords.

Overture has a running 12%+ conversion rate with this campaign, and has been getting well over 100 visitors per day. AdWords has a 0% conversion rate, and has only sent 20 visitors total. The ads are very similar in content, and I’m currently bidding over two times as much in AdWords than overture. So, what’s the problem?

The Problem:
The problem lies within the structure of how AdWords ranks their ads. AdWords gives equal weight to all types of key word matching, while Overture places exact matching phrases above broad match phrases.

As simple and irrelevant as this may seem, it costs advertisers millions of dollars a year in unwanted clicks, and lowers the relevance of AdWords ads.

What this specifically means (Ignore the AdWords quality scoring system):
Assume I am bidding on the term ‘small business loan’ at a Cost per Click (CPC) of $.50. (Both Overture and AdWords)
Another site, is bidding on the term ‘loan’ with a CPC of $5.00. (Both Overture and AdWords)

Someone searches for ‘small business loan’ on Google and Yahoo. On yahoo I rank #1, but on Google I rank #53.

This is because I am only competing against other websites bidding specifically on ‘small business loan’ in overture, but I am competing against websites bidding on ‘loan’, in AdWords.

Why would Google do this?
First and foremost, money! Google makes $5 per click from the ‘loan’ advertisers, and only $.50 per click from ‘small business loan’ advertisers. Naturally they are going to base their ranking from a monetary system. Regardless of the quality scoring algorithm, cost is still a primary factor in Google. In this situation, relevancy of these advertisements is all but completely thrown out the window, something that Google always claims to be their primary motivator.

In the end, the businesses that suffer the most from this system are the advertisers. The advertisers bidding on ‘loan’ don’t get qualified traffic, so their cost goes up and their conversion rates goes down. The advertisers bidding on ‘small business loan’ don’t get the traffic they want, so they find other places to advertise. Google doesn’t really care, because they think they get a bigger paycheck this way. If you don’t think money is the primary motivator of Google, ask Google shareholders if they mind their stock going down.

Don’t make this mistake:
Something that I commonly see when small advertisers run into this situation, is that they go and start bidding on the major key words trying to get their ads to show. This is not what a small advertiser should do, as they will only end up burning through their money with little chance of a positive return.

My Recommendation:
First off, find more key phrases that don’t contain those major single words in them. There are hundreds of untapped keywords in every industry, that may not get a lot of traffic, but are great at converting visitors into customers. If you are only using AdWords, try Overture. You have a much greater control over exactly what position and how much you pay for your ads with Overture, which makes for what I consider to be a far superior system.

Unless you have an unlimited budget, and you are tasked with a suicidal branding mission, it’s almost impossible to directly compete with huge advertisers with deep pockets. There are ways to compete with big businesses, but not through a one on one bidding battle. In my industry, we have competitors spending well over $200,000 per month on PPC advertising. Not many small companies I know of can compete with a budget like that.

For businesses new to advertising with AdWords or if you are struggling, I highly recommend reading: ‘Winning Results with Google AdWords‘.