Forget about New Year’s resolutions, we’ve got everything under control!

Put an end to all those good intentions you proclaim on New Year’s Day that fall by the wayside by January 15 (we assure you, no resolution has ever lasted longer).
This year, we’re going to take care of you for all 52 weeks of the year.

Because we know that being an online retailer means doing 12 jobs at once (you’re a developer, an accountant, a logistics coordinator, a designer, an editor, a salesperson, and more) and that it’s difficult to plan ahead and prioritize.
Because it’s our mission to help you make your online store a success.
And because, quite simply, we’re here to support you.

We’re delighted to present the 2015 e-Commerce Calendar, broken down week by week and adapted to the market and events in your country.

12 pages to help you succeed all year long

Each week of the year you will find a tip for boosting traffic or conversion rate, or an idea for enhancing user experience, increasing average cart value, gaining customer loyalty, and more.

To make life easier, we also suggest a selection of tools — to help you create promotions and spread the word far and wide, for example — that will save you time when managing your store…

Is a major sales event coming up (sales, Christmas, Mother’s Day, Black Friday, etc.)? No problem! This year more than ever, you’ll have everything you need to plan ahead and understand how and when to start getting your store ready.

Each month, a PrestaShop merchant will also share with you a tip that has contributed to their success

… and if you’re not used to taking it easy, we’ll even tell you when it’s time to relax a little!

Customize your calendar

All of the tips are simply suggestions from experts on how to enhance your website, help you get organized, and show you your online store in a whole new light; they are not intended to discourage you.

The calendar also contains sections that need filling in. By you.
Your store is unique. You know your customers, products and website culture better than anyone else. Write in all the events relating to your store that you would like to organize, now.

Key figures

THE 2015 E-COMMERCE CALENDAR:

• 0 cents to download
• 1 circular calendar showing peak periods in the year at a glance
• 8 countries included (France, Spain, the US, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, the UK and Poland)
• 12 customized pages with secrets revealed by merchants
• 52 e-commerce tips (or even more depending on the country)
• 327 audits of online stores (conducted recently during various events), which gave us the idea to make this calendar to support you

Next year we hope to offer calendars for even more countries.
Do you want to help?
Don’t hesitate to send us word of any major events in your region, or tips you’d like to share with other merchants in your country, using the email address calendar@prestashop.com.

A thank you to Pagination.com for its help integrating the template and data.

Wishing you a fantastic 2015 and a successful e-commerce year!

Download calendar now

(Source from prestashop.com. Read the original article here)

As online merchants, it’s important to know how credit card security features have evolved to prevent unauthorized credit card use. It’s why today we present this infographic: Credit Cards vs. Fraudsters: The Evolution of Credit Card Security.

This infographic is sponsored by Desjardins, our preferred Canadian payment processor. Start accepting payments on your Canadian online shop by downloading the free Desjardins’ module.

Seamlessly implement this payment solution to start processing credit card payments, refunds, and more! To help you limit credit card risk, all Desjardins accounts include a full range of fraud prevention tools including:

• CVV2 Validation
• 3-D Secure Validation
• Fraud Prevention Module with
  • Order Filter by IP Address
  • Order Filter by Credit Card Number

(Source from prestashop.com. Read the original article here)

PrestaShop 1.6.0.11 is here

We are launching straight into 2015 by wishing you a very happy New Year and by making PrestaShop 1.6.0.11 available for download.
We would like to thank the whole Community, who has helped us test, debug and improve this latest version. It’s thanks to you too that it’s all been possible!

Plenty of new features!

More than 300 improvements and new features have been added to the new version. You can find full details on our changelog, but the major differences are as follows:

• Improved tax and rounding management.
• Improved specific price reductions and management of associated prices including/excluding VAT.
• New Costa Rica localization pack.
• Option to manage back-office orders in catalog mode.
• Substantial upgrading of the Wishlist module.
• Updated taxes and states for Canada.

Tax and rounding management

This has been THE major achievement of the new version. PrestaShop now offers greatly improved management of tax and rounding by giving you a wider choice and greater freedom when setting your parameters. Here’s what you need to know:

• Tax calculations carried out by product, product line or total products.
• New rounding management: Half_Up rounding to the nearest whole number and, in particular, the Half_Even or Bankers’ Rounding method for rounding to the nearest even number.
• Option to set the desired number of decimal places, which will affect the number of decimals used in all the price calculations for your online store.

You can find details on how to make these changes to your store in our documentation!

So, what are you waiting for? The new year is the perfect time to update your stores!

> Download PrestaShop 1.6.0.11
> Check out our update guide

(Source from prestashop.com. Read the original article here)

A buyer persona is a fictional customer who closely resembles your ideal customer. Constructing a believable, ‘human’ persona makes it much easier to understand and empathize with your customers, so building personas should be your first step –they should be ready at the planning stage of content marketing or social media campaigns.

Rather than cite a lot of dry statistical data, you can use that data to build a buyer persona, then internalize the customer you’re trying to attract, and relate to them as human beings.

How is a persona different from a definition of an ideal customer?

Suppose you take some of the facts about your best-performing customers – they’re usually between 30 and 45, they normally reside in South London and they’re mostly men. If these facts describe your best-performing customers then they also describe the people your marketing should be optimized for. These are the people you want as Twitter followers and Facebook friends, and who you hope will have a naturally positive response to emails and other marketing – but it’s hard to picture them while creating content if all you have to go on are dry statistics.

Now meet Greg. Greg’s a 39-year-old man from South London who’s interested in your product. Even that basic description makes it easier to put a face to a name—and that’s all a buyer persona is: a fictional character who epitomizes your ideal customer. Now, instead of asking, “Will this perform well with x demographic?” you can ask yourself, “Will Greg like this?”

How many customer personas do you need?

Having just one customer persona is probably too limiting. Many experts recommend making between three and five customer personas, a number that’s big enough to represent the variety inherent in a fairly large audience, but small enough to retain the value of specificity.

How do you go about constructing a persona?

Begin with a business card

One way to make a customer persona is to begin with a business card template and fill in the blanks for your ideal customer. You’ll want to determine:

• Name
• Job title
• Location

Add a resume

After that, add a resume with:

• Age
• Gender
• Family
• Education
• Career

Hopes, fears and values
Next, try to imagine your customer’s hopes, fears and values. It’s even better if you can go beyond your imagination. A great way to gain this kind of data is to use quizzes and polls on Facebook and on your site. People love these and they consistently generate engagement – plus they give you the details necessary to create true-to-life buyer personas.

The elevator pitch
Finally, add an ‘elevator pitch’ – one tailored specifically to this customer. Take some time on this: you’ll probably never use it “as is,” but it will give you a clear idea of what you want to say to this customer, and that clarity will come through in other messages.

Bringing personas to life

You’ll probably find that as you develop your personas, other questions need answering to really bring them to life. Some of these might include:

Computer literacy. Are your ideal customers “digital natives,” or are they wary of new technology? How precise can you get with this? It will help immensely when you design your marketing tools.

Hobbies. What does your customer do for fun? This is an important way to humanize the personas you’re creating, but it’s also an effective means of building a more complete picture and getting both depth of background and useful detail. Again, this is information that your social contacts will often be happy to divulge via polls or other interactions.

News sources. Does Greg (remember Greg?) read The Economist, The Guardian or Men’s Health? Does he wait for his news sources to land on the porch or is he an RSS subscriber – or does he visit the same news websites every day?

This is an ‘indicator’ behavior. It tells you what news Greg cares about and how he gets it, but it also gives you broader clues about what kind of person he is, both from his preferred news sources (Fox News tends to cater to the politically conservative, while Huffington Post readers are usually more liberal) and formats.

Real quotes from actual customers, drawn from interviews, polls, comments online or other sources, are a goldmine of useful information. Nothing will humanize your persona more than some actual human input.

Data sources

Where should you get the information you need to create personas?

Here are three good places to look:

Check your site’s existing traffic analytics. Site analytics will show you where your customers come from, the keywords they use to find you, how long they spend on the site once they arrive, what they look at and for how long, how much they spend and what they spend it on, and more. This set of data shows you who your audience is, what they want and how they go about getting it.

Research your social media. Use social media listening skills to build an image of your customers via their Facebook and Twitter interactions with your brand. For retail-specific insights, especially ones that relate to your customers’ likes, dislikes, tastes and ideas, Pinterest is of increasing value.

Ask your audience questions. Your customers know themselves. They know what they want and what they like – and if you give them a chance, they’ll often be very happy to tell you. Use surveys, interviews and polls to gather data that will allow you to create effective marketing personas. A persona is a fiction, but to be useful it has to be rooted in truth. Real data will reveal that truth and the more of it that comes from from customers, the better.

When you’re making decisions about how to orient your marketing efforts, you should almost feel like your customer persona is in the room with you. In the same way you know if your best friend is going to like something, you should know if your customer persona will like, hate, or love everything about it. And don’t forget to name your personas!

Kunle’s Bio:

Kunle Campbell is a specialist eCommerce marketing consultant who works with mid-tier online retailers. He helps drive business growth and profitability through customer acquisition (driving traffic), conversion optimization and customer retention. All of his strategies are data and metric driven. You can read some more of Kunle’s articles on the company’s blog at 2x Media. Also follow him on Twitter, Google+ and Facebook.

(Source from prestashop.com. Read the original article here)

Dulzura de Papel is a PrestaShop store designed and developed by Jimena, a passionate graphic designer, photographer, and graphic studio owner from Buenos Aires. She found a niche market in selling customizable themed decorations for children parties such as birthdays, baby showers and baptisms.

Jimena’s dreams are big and she trusts PrestaShop to support her as she takes on new challenges like expanding her shop beyond Argentina’s boundaries through to the rest of the world. In this article, we share Jimena’s success story and her ecommerce advice for fellow merchants looking to sell downloadable products online.

An entrepreneurial mom

Through her daughter’s school, Jimena met fellow moms who inspired the idea behind Dulzura de Papel. “I wanted to create a beautiful, yet quick and easily customizable solution for moms who want a special party for their kids, but have no time to deal with decorations.” With Dulzura de Papel, customers can download customizable themed decorations for children parties.

“This is a slow change from my physical graphic studio to a web store that can run on its own”, shares Jimena, “and this migration will give me the flexibility to do what I love: spending time with my daughter.”

The perfect software for her dream store

Finding the perfect software wasn’t easy. “I first tried to build the store in WordPress because I was familiar with it. I bought modules and tried to install them, but it was extremely difficult. Even the WordPress Phone Support in Argentina told me it would be hard to make it work the way I wanted.”

Determined, Jimena searched for another software with features that will allow her to run a digital online store. “PrestaShop had everything I was looking for and even more.” Jimena was impressed with native features that allow her to successfully sell her digital products. “The stock version already has very powerful functionalities, such as the IP Geo-localization and the multi-language option.”

The online marketing strategy

Having launched Dulzura de Papel, the next step was to drive traffic to her website using social media and other marketing strategies. Jimena advertises her brand and concept through her Facebook page (with over 26K fans) all at the low cost of zero. To drive traffic to the website, she shares links on social media that take customers to free products on her online store. She also promotes sales on major Argentinian shopping days including: Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Children’s Day and Teacher’s Day.

A simple buying process

Digital products require no inventory or shipping logistics, but it is essential to have a clear and simple buying process. The checkout process should also be easy because little information is needed. Jimena shortened her checkout process, with PrestaShop Addons’ One Page Checkout.

Through this simplified checkout process, Dulzura de Papel’s customers make their payments, receive a link via email, then download a Zip file with High Quality PDFs.

Because many of Dulzura de Papel’s customers are sometimes unfamiliar with downloadable products, Jimena uses various methods to guide them:

The protection of her digital product’s copyright

The same way Jimena explains the checkout process for her customers, she clarifies the terms of use. She highlights that sharing, selling or publishing any design is an infringement of Dulzura de Papel’s Copyright.

“PrestaShop’s software includes a digital product configuration that generates download links valid only for 30 days after the purchase, limited to up to 3 downloads. This is great because it limits the risk of diffusion.” Additionally, Jimena password protects the products in case a customer tries to open it on any design software to modify the illustrations. “Because all the products include a trademark that reads ‘dulzuradepapel.com’, I don’t want anyone to modify the design. Of course, you can’t control absolutely everything that customers do, but these are great ways of enforcing copyright rules.”

The future of Dulzura de Papel

“Most of my customers come from Argentina, Mexico and other Spanish speaking countries,” claims Jimena, “For now my store is only available in Spanish. My plan is to translate my website into different languages, starting with English and Portuguese, so that people from anywhere in the world will be able to buy and download my designs. PrestaShop allows me to do just that.”

“My advice to all the merchants starting out is to take the step. PrestaShop is a safe, versatile and dynamic software with many benefits and options that can make almost anything come true.” Jimena’s dedication led her to create a beautiful and successful online store with PrestaShop — turning her dream into a reality.

Inspired to make your dreams come true? Get started with PrestaShop’s free and open source ecommerce software. Not ready to start selling just yet? Read more PrestaShop Success Stories.

(Source from prestashop.com. Read the original article here)

It seems like just yesterday we were making summer plans, but with a blink of an eye, the year has passed and we’re almost into 2015. Throughout this year, we’ve seen some great newsletters from PrestaShop merchants.

Although it was hard, we’ve narrowed them down to the top 10 ecommerce newsletters of 2014. We’ve listed each newsletter’s subject line, shop, reasons why we think it’s great and what you should try next year. Let’s get started!

Which of these newsletters will inspire yours in 2015? Tell us in the comments below. Ready to start sending your own newsletters? Purchase the Newsletter Module from PrestaShop Addons.

(Source from prestashop.com. Read the original article here)

The end of the year is coming up. It’s time to take stock of the past year and also give thanks! We’d like to thank you, our readers, who’ve been with us for all of our posts and made valuable contributions.

You’ve found these articles interesting and compelling, you’ve liked them and commented on them – but perhaps you’ve missed a few. Here are the top 14 most-read articles of the year from the PrestaShop blog – make sure you haven’t missed an important one!

1. Building an Online Store: 10 Questions to Ask Before Hiring an Ecommerce Developer

Finding the developer or the agency to build the store of your dreams is easier said than done! We’ve made a list of the 10 essential questions to ask before hiring an ecommerce developer.

2. The 10 Best KPIs Every Online Store Owner Should Keep an Eye On

Determine what your strengths and weaknesses are by tracking your store’s performance, and grow your business. Here’s a non-exhaustive list of key performance indicators you should keep an eye on.

3. 5 Creative Online Business Ideas for Ecommerce Inspiration

Are you thinking about your ecommerce project and looking for an original idea to set yourself apart from the competition? Don’t miss this article which will inspire you, with stores that have brought some original thinking to their sectors.

4. 10 Free Tools for Every Ecommerce Professional

This is the ideal article for ecommerce professionals on a limited budget! From design and SEO to user testing and password management, here are 10 free tools that will make your life easier and boost your business.

5. 5 Examples of Ecommerce Product Pages That Convert

Everyone knows that product pages play a crucial role in your visitors’ purchasing decisions. Simple optimizations can dramatically increase your conversion rate. Find out what they are in this article!

6. How to Create an Online Store: 10 Steps to Write Your Business Plan

It’s a required step for all entrepreneurs, but it can turn out to be complex. There’s a lot of information in a business plan, and it’s not always easy to keep track of everything! Here are the 10 key steps for making a good one.

7. DIY Ecommerce Guide to Gorgeous Product Photography

Here’s the perfect guide to taking gorgeous product photos. Thomas Kragelund, an expert in product image optimization, reveals all his secrets for visuals that will improve your conversion rate.

8. 5 Secrets for Better Ecommerce Conversions

Conversion: the holy grail of ecommerce. Set off on your quest for a better conversion rate by implementing the 5 simple tips we share with you in this article.

9. How to Find the Right SEO Keywords for Your Online Store – Part 1/2

Our SEO specialist explains step-by-step how to find the right keywords for your online store. In the second part of the article, learn how to structure your ecommerce site with these keywords.

10. E-mail Marketing: 6 Examples of Ecommerce Marketing Emails That Work

E-mail is not dead! When it comes to drawing traffic to your site or building customer loyalty, it’s an ideal communication tool. Learn about best practices for email marketing and take inspiration from these examples of emails that work.

11. 10 Essential Ecommerce Metrics for Google Analytics

To get more information about your performance and better understand your user flows through the conversion funnel, read this article on the 10 essential ecommerce metrics for Google Analytics.

12. 10 Things I Wish I Knew Before Opening an Ecommerce Site

Ecommerce site owners share their experience with you, talking about the 10 things they would have liked to know before opening their online store. Read this article and you’ll be ready to launch into your own ecommerce adventure.

13. 12 Free Ways to Grow Your Ecommerce Business

Did you know that there are many free ways to grow your business and your sales? Here’s a quick overview of these free tips!

14. 7 Strategies to Implement When Your Website Traffic Drops

What should you do when your online store shows a serious drop in traffic? First piece of advice: above all, don’t panic! We’ve got 7 strategies you can implement to turn that trend around.

Keep reading our blog and find lots of good advice so you can succeed online and take advantage of everything PrestaShop has to offer!
What if you’re not a merchant yet? Bring your ecommerce plans to life by downloading PrestaShop for free today!

(Source from prestashop.com. Read the original article here)

Have you ever thought about the purpose of the links on the footer of every website? How about the static pages those links take you, such as the “About Us”, “Delivery”, “Legal Notice” or “Terms and Conditions”?

Even if tiny fonts and complex sentence structures make you want to ignore their existence, these pages can affect your brand’s reputation, your store’s reliability and most importantly, your company’s legal status.

This article guides you through the process of writing your online store’s CMS pages, and explains how to add and modify them in your PrestaShop Back Office.

1. Look around

Just look, don’t look-copy-paste move. Every company’s needs are different and your CMS pages should be customized to fit them. This doesn’t mean you can’t check out your competition. On the contrary, your competitors can sometimes be your best guide!

Locate your competitors’ list of CMS pages and check them out! Analyze their content, strong points, weak points, tone of voice, and layout (including screenshots, videos, and forms). You now have a good framework to help you work the next step: self-analysis.

2. Think of your company

Brainstorm and define the 2 most important aspects of your CMS page content:

3. Decide which type of CMS page you need

CMS pages fall into one of three categories. We listed each type, recommended important pages and detailed their purpose. Whether you are looking to write content from scratch or rewrite an existing page, remember that each type is necessary because they each affect your company differently.

4. Find the perfect page title

Sometimes it can be hard to find the perfect title for your pages. No worries! We put together this list of common CMS pages, a short description of each and two catchy titles to get you started.

Company Information Pages

Process / Procedure Pages

Legal Pages
Due to the nature of these pages, we suggest keeping these titles as they are so that they are easy to find.

5. Write the content

Here are tips to keep in mind when writing CMS page content:

• Cover only the topics relevant to your industry and your company.
• Write in simple English, using legal jargon only when necessary.
• Avoid unclear or undefined points, be specific.
• Communicate with a voice that represents your company’s culture.
• Keep your text short and concise.
• Organize your content into appropriate sections and headings.
• If you don’t have enough content to fill out an entire section, combine them.

We’ve given you all the tools you need to write great CMS pages. Now it’s your turn.

6. Integrate your pages

If you are a PrestaShop user, your online store comes with a set of default pages. It is essential that you update these pages and create new ones once you have new titles and content ready. Access them through your BACK OFFICE > PREFERENCES > CMS.

7. Update and maintain

Keep your CMS pages current with updated information. An outdated Contact Us page with an invalid phone number can negatively affect your company’s reputation. More importantly, an obsolete Legal page can result in serious legal issues! Set a reminder to update and maintain your CMS pages.

Please note that this guide is informative, and does not constitute legal advice.

Ready to create great CMS pages for your online store? Download PrestaShop’s free ecommerce software to get started! Already a CMS expert, share your tips in the comments!

(Source from prestashop.com. Read the original article here)

SEO will be (almost) the same in 2015

Panda, Penguin, Hummingbird, Caffeine … Although Google is always telling us about its latest algorithm updates, SEO in general remains largely the same, with, of course, a few developments here and there. As the saying goes, if the algorithm ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

As far as I can see, Google Search is striving to achieve two goals:

• To make its users happy by displaying high-quality, relevant results
• To increase revenue from these search results through AdWords

Google’s aim is not to provide you with free traffic, generating more free traffic is the purpose of SEO. I think it’s vital to make this distinction.

Since 1998, Google’s algorithm ‘recipe’ has used more or less the same ingredients:

• Relevance (how well your website corresponds to the search query)
• Popularity (how many links direct towards your site)

Given Google’s worldwide monopoly over the market, this strategy is clearly working, so I see no reason why Google would decide to rethink its algorithm.

So, my prediction for 2015 is that SEO will continue to develop along much the same lines (an opinion shared by Rand Fishkin, founder of Moz on his blog.

So, how will SEO develop exactly?

Here at PrestaShop, we are committed to discussing e-commerce with e-merchants. Since SEO is an essential growth tool for small stores, I have put together my list of predictions for the future of e-commerce SEO.

2015 will be all about mobile

Back in early 2014, Matt Cutts had already predicted that numbers of search requests sent from mobile devices would surpass those of PCs.

Likewise in the UK, Internet Retailer announced in September, that mobile and tablet traffic to its retail site had overtaken that of PCs.

Below you can see a comparison of global traffic from PCs, smartphones and tablets compiled by StatCounter.

If you play around a bit on the StatCounter website and filter the results by country, you will in fact see that mobile is already the dominant channel in certain markets. I’m especially thinking of India here, where mobile is leagues ahead of the rest, accounting for 70% of total traffic. But whatever your target location, the trend is catching.

You should also bear in mind that more and more people are using their smartphones while watching TV.

The mobile and tablet boom is well and truly underway, and to come back to SEO, Google – who is also seeing growth in mobile traffic – wants to satisfy its users by providing as many mobile-compatible hits as possible. That’s why Google favors online retailers with mobile sites, to the detriment of those who are still only desktop-ready.

In the US, Google already displays a site’s mobile compatibility right from the SERP (Search Engine Result Page):

According to Gary Illyes, in order to receive this little ‘mobile-friendly’ badge of honor on results pages, all you need to do is take the Google Webmaster Mobile-Friendly Test. This tool will let you see whether your site is mobile-friendly and if it meets Google’s criteria:
Take the mobile test

If you want to delve even deeper, I recommend reading this G+ blog post by John Mueller, which does just that.

My Mobile SEO recommendation for 2015

You will need a mobile-friendly version of your online store. If you want to continue developing your SEO, you have two main options: using a responsive design template (whereby layout changes according to the viewing environment), or a dedicated mobile site, i.e. http://m.example.com.

• All of PrestaShop’s responsive design templates
• The Shopgate solution for creating a dedicated mobile site

My Mobile SEO prediction

I anticipate that in 2015, or latest 2016, 100% of all Google results matching queries made from a smartphone will be mobile-friendly. In other words you’ll no longer see desktop sites on your smartphone.

An HTTP-secure year

Google’s other main campaign for 2014 was to urge websites to switch over to HTTPS from HTTP. They even added it as a ranking signal in their search algorithm.

But don’t get ahead of yourself by thinking this alone will get you on the first page of Google results! However, since every little bit helps, why not give it a try?
My Security SEO recommendation

Switch your online store to HTTPS in 2015.

Back to basics

So, here is why I mentioned SEO evolution… although SEO is undergoing constant change, the process of optimizing your website for Google searches remains largely the same:

To come first, you need to have the best content with the best links.

Start by identifying keywords

Find the right SEO keywords for your online store

Your New Year’s resolutions for SEO-friendly content

Structure your online store for optimum SEO

Then think about your Content Marketing strategy

You should also make sure the titles and descriptions you use on product and category pages are properly formulated to maximize SERP CTR and conversion.

My Link Building recommendation for 2015

Half the battle when creating a good SEO strategy is getting linking right. But that doesn’t just mean optimizing the tags used in your online store or writing a few blog posts; to increase your SEO in 2015, you will still need links, but they will have to be good quality.

What Google is doing to e-commerce sites with poor links

Google has declared all-out war on websites selling links, and has even reported them in its Webmaster Guidelines violations. From a legal standpoint, even though Google doesn’t make the law, it really does rule over the Internet, so I would recommend taking extreme precaution if you don’t want to get caught by PINGUIN.

In the meantime, here are a few Link Building tips for 2015

• Don’t construct your own link building if you don’t know what you’re doing.
• Enlist the help of an SEO agency or professional.
• Don’t use (or stop using) link-selling sites.
• Don’t optimize by using keyword-rich anchor text such as my keyword.
• Use unique anchors or ones that contain the name of your website, for example.
• Think about consistency with websites that redirect to you or your online store.
• If you’re still in the habit of exchanging links with other websites, stop right now!
• Don’t get led into believing that link building is just about inserting a few links into blog comments, forum posts or directories.
• Remember that a good link is one that will bring in traffic.
• Use links that direct to different pages of your website.

Finally, know that it’s not true that you need to pay to have links. Remember that your product pages and your blog content can provide you with links just by being top quality.

My SEO tracker for 2015

Any SEO expert will tell you that, if you want to get better at SEO, you need carry out a daily inspection of specialist blogs. Below are a few sites I recommend you check out in 2015.

Googlers to follow in 2015

https://www.google.com/+JohnMueller
https://www.google.com/+GaryIllyes
https://www.google.com/+PierreFar
https://www.google.com/+MaileOhye
https://www.google.com/+GoogleWebmasters
https://www.google.com/+MattCutts (if he returns to Google)

List of SEO blogs to follow

http://moz.com/blog
http://moz.com/rand/
http://searchengineland.com/
http://searchenginewatch.com/
http://www.seobook.com/blog
http://blog.searchmetrics.com/
http://www.stateofdigital.com/
http://cognitiveseo.com/
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com

Some more general web marketing and content marketing sites

http://www.convinceandconvert.com/
http://www.internetmarketingninjas.com/
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/
http://sherpablog.marketingsherpa.com/
http://chiefmartec.com/
http://chrisbrogan.com/
http://www.convinceandconvert.com/
http://heidicohen.com/

(Source from prestashop.com. Read the original article here)

Today we support our claim with our article titled, “From bricks to clicks: 5 reasons you need to sell online today.” We’re sharing the limitations of a traditional brick and mortar and showing you how an online shop complements your retail shop to help you get the best of both worlds.

1. Your shop is not open 24/7.

When is your current shop open? 8:00AM -7:00PM? What happens to customers who want to shop long after your shop has closed? Closing your shop is literally turning customers at your door, away.

Sure, you can keep your shop open longer. However, the overhead to do so is significantly more than creating an online shop – especially with PrestaShop’s free open source software. The best thing about online shops? They are open 24/7. By launching one, you easily extend your store hours.

2. Some customers cannot physically go to your shop.

Many business owners are familiar with this phrase: “location, location, location”. When running a retail shop, the success of your shop is due in large to its location. If it is not convenient for customers to get to your store, you can kiss them goodbye.

Opening an online shop allows everyone in the country, or even the world, to access your shop! Suddenly your shop’s location is no longer an issue. You are no longer limited to selling just to customers in your neighborhood.

3. Shelf space is limited.

Just as important as your retail shop’s location, is the amount of shelf space you have. As a retail shop owner, you know all too well that products need to be positioned and lit properly in your showroom. This limits the number of products you can display at a given time.

With your online shop, the number of products you can display is unlimited. Your challenge will be to make great product pages that are easy to navigate. Start with gorgeous product images then compliment them with great product descriptions. Then help customers navigate your shop with a keyword driven website structure. With these 3 things in place, you are ready to expand your product selection beyond the shelf space of your retail shop.

4. Profits are limited through one sales channel.

Selling through a retail location is just one of the many channels you can use. Opting for just one channel limits your ability to increase profits because you are limiting your customer base. In short, by limiting customers you also limit your sales.

Grow your business and sell more by adding a new sales channel – an online shop. You will target a wider customer base, and sell a larger volume of products. This will put you in the position to negotiate better inventory rates from suppliers and increase profit margins for your business overall.

5. Self-promotions appear untrustworthy.

No matter how great the products you sell are, positive product reviews that come directly from you will always appear sales-y and fake. After all, no shop owner will ever speak badly about their product(s).

This is why having an online shop can benefit your retail shop. One of the greatest advantages of an online shop is the ability to leverage social proof. Customer reviews and testimonials build credibility in your products because this promotion comes from someone who doesn’t benefit from saying that the product is good.

In a nutshell

If you’re already have a retail shop, your online store simply becomes an extension of your current shop. Selling online will extend your shop’s reach, product selection and hours of operation. By doing so, you increase the number of potential customers, which can translate into additional sales.

Have we convinced you to open an online shop to expand your brick and mortar store? Start selling online with PrestaShop’s shopping cart software. Already selling both online and offline? Tell us which reason is your favorite in the comments below.

(Source from prestashop.com. Read the original article here)