8 replies to this topic

[houstoncory]

For those who have put a link on top of their OSC site to your blog, please give me your advice.

Ive been running a blog for my company for several months now and its coming along nicely.

Ive built up enough posts that Im ready to start publicising the blog some more, and am considering putting a link on the top of my retail shopping site to the blog.

My question for today is, has anyone found putting a link to your blog a distraction to your customers, or has it worked out well ?

My site is setup very well to get customers to SHOP, and Im afraid if they get distracted from shopping with a blog it could lower conversion rates..

Anyone have experience with this ?

[houstoncory]

Anyone ?

[joslohan]

I personally think you can add a link as long as it goes along with your site CSS stylesheet. u may want to see how i did it by clicking the link under my post. it is added as a button on the header and then i used a linkback to my main site. its pretty easy to find. visitors should noe get confused by that. however if you do not want it in the header, the info box would be the most suitable place for a link.

houstoncory, on Jul 23 2009, 08:24 PM, said:

For those who have put a link on top of their OSC site to your blog, please give me your advice.

Ive been running a blog for my company for several months now and its coming along nicely.

Ive built up enough posts that Im ready to start publicising the blog some more, and am considering putting a link on the top of my retail shopping site to the blog.

My question for today is, has anyone found putting a link to your blog a distraction to your customers, or has it worked out well ?

My site is setup very well to get customers to SHOP, and Im afraid if they get distracted from shopping with a blog it could lower conversion rates..

Anyone have experience with this ?

[joslohan]

sorry just had to remove the link as moderator informed me that this is not allowed in the signature.

here is the webtemplates.site88.net

Edited by Jan Zonjee, 02 August 2009, 20:05.

[ecartz]

I think that the biggest question is whether your blog encourages shopping in your store. For example, if your blog is about the joys of geocaching and you sell geocaching supplies on your site, then it makes perfect sense. Someone may come to your site to shop, find the blog, and become a regular visitor to the blog. Then you can promote shopping from the blog and regain in repeat sales whatever you lost in sales due to distraction.

The biggest problem that I see with someone switching to the blog is if they lose items from their cart (because the osCommerce session expires). This can be avoided by having the blog keep the osCommerce session alive but I don't know if there is code for that already or if someone would have to write it. An easier solution might be to only show the blog link if there are no items in the cart and/or to exclude certain pages (e.g. product info and product listing).

If your blog has nothing to do with the things that you sell on your store, then there will be limited opportunity to promote the store from the blog. This suggests that you should not crosslink, as you won't get back any sales you might lose to someone who gets distracted to the blog instead. Then the only place that it might make sense to link to the blog is on the checkout success page (where the sale is already completed).

[purplemartinart]

Check out how my blog is, it opens in a new window
Here is the link: purplemartins-r-us.com the blog is on one of those purple tabs...see?

Edited by Jan Zonjee, 02 August 2009, 20:05.

[nudylady]

why not make the whole blog as a folder of your oscommerce domain to help PR

[newclearbomb]

any link on a shopping page that can take someone away from placing an order will only reduce your conversion rate. If you want your customers to stay on your site and check out your blog, why not put a link on your checkout_success.php page so that they can get invited to have a look once they've handed over their cash?

[Ben Nevis]

I go with ecartz, it depends on what the blog 'sells' and what the shop sells. In most cases I suspect it probably will be a distraction - generally I find it so in shops where I encounter it, but sometimes it can be useful where the shop and the blog both relate to a special interest group and the blog has useful additional information related to the products - not just sales blurb but genuine actual personal experience - or about the environment in which the products are used. If it's a good blog addressing a fan base or a hobbyist group or something like that, it could attract customers to the site.

Edited by Ben Nevis, 18 November 2009, 01:27.