Recently in ProStores Software

Prostores is pleased to announce our latest product release: ProStores 8.2. With this release, we've included the following key enhancements designed to help merchants drive traffic to their store and give access to additional functionality from third party providers

New Features in ProStores

ProStores 8.2 Feature Highlights
Prostores is pleased to announce our latest product release: ProStores 8.2. With this release, we've included the following key enhancements designed to help merchants drive traffic to their store and give access to additional functionality from third party providers:

• Sitemap Management
• Solutions Directory Page

In addition to the 8.2 release, ProStores has also integrated a third-party sales tax calculator from AvaTax.

Sitemap Management
ProStores merchants with dedicated URLs can now generate sitemaps which will make their store more visible to search engines. The sitemap generation tool will generate and store a sitemap file in the store's root directory for web crawlers from any search engine to index a ProStores web store. It also allows merchants to leverage Yahoo and Google's sitemap submission services (merchants must configure accounts with Yahoo and Google first).

Control of the sitemap settings will be included in Store Administration under Product->Market Demand->SEO.

Solutions Directory
ProStores merchants can now view a page of all certified third-party applications that are available to integrate with their store. The new page is accessible from Store Administration >> Support Manager.

Integration of AvaTax Sales Tax Service
In addition to the ProStores 8.2 release, ProStores has also integrated a third-party sales tax calculation tool from AvaTax. This real-time tax calculation tool eliminates the need for merchants to create and manage tax regions and tax categories in Prostores. To select AvaTax as your sales tax calculator, go to Store Settings >> Sales Tax and select AvaTAx from the drop down menu. ProStores merchants can then sign up for the service and proceed with configuration within the ProSTores sales tax preferences settings.

Prostores is pleased to announce our latest product release: ProStores 8.1. With this release, we’ve included a number of enhancements that make it easier for merchants to create, manage and display attributes. Merchants will now also be able to send partial shipments in cases where part of the order is backordered.

You will notice some changes to the look and feel of the store administration. Other than the obvious color changes and such, the only major change was in the Design Studio.

The Design Studio is now integrated into the navigation of the regular administration under the heading “Store Design”. You can now set baselines on your designs page by page - and is offered automatically when you edit a template.

• Support for up to 10 attributes per product
• Display attributes by drop-down menu or radio buttons
• Support for reordering attributes on the storefront
• Shared attributes across products
• Support of partial shipments

Attributes Enhancements

Support for up to 10 attributes per product
We've increased the number of attributes for Business tier and above from 2 to 10 per product. This allows merchants to have more specifications for products.

Display attributes by drop-down menu or radio buttons
Merchants now have the option to use pull down lists or radio buttons for each attribute. They can also combine the display types, so both pull down menus and radio buttons can be shown for attribute selections for one product.

Support for reordering attributes on the storefront
The order in which attributes are displayed on the storefront can easily be changed with the new "Reorder Attributes" option on the Product Information page.

Shared attributes across products
Merchants with products that have similar attributes can now share attributes across their entire product catalog. Attribute lists allow merchants to save time by not having to apply similar attributes to each product one at a time.

Support of partial shipments (Advanced tier and above)

Merchants are also now able to offer better customer service by sending partial shipments, so that their customers don't have to wait for backordered products. With ProStores 8.1, Merchants can now split an order in which products are backordered.

The leading sales tax management solution for eCommerce stores

As the sales tax industry leader, AvaTax is the fastest, easiest, most accurate and affordable way for small and mid-sized businesses to manage compulsory sales tax functions. Integrated into accounting and eCommerce applications used by over 10,000 users, AvaTax eliminates the tedious work and complexity associated with calculating, collecting, reporting and remitting sales taxes in multiple jurisdictions.

Now, AvaTax is easily accessible to ProStores merchants, from right within their ProStores management console.

1. Keyword and Competitive Analysis.
Spend some time performing searches. Make a list of keywords and keyword phrases that you believe a person is likely use to find the exact products and services you sell. Performing searches using your list will lead you to your competitors’ sites. Analyze their sites and try to determine what they are doing to get good placement.

2. Never Try to Trick the Search Engines.
Long-term, high placement in the major search engines requires correct and thorough optimization techniques. Hidden text, doorway pages, and link farms don’t work and could result in blacklisting your domain. In fact, so many webmasters began spamming meta tags with inappropriate keywords that search engines have greatly de-emphasized the importance of meta tags on search. Even so, it’s a good idea to add meta tags with relevant keywords using ProStores built-in features.

3. Product Names and Descriptions.
Probably the most important optimization criterion is the existence of highly targeted, pertinent, keyword-rich text on your store pages. Your product names and descriptions must contain relevant keywords for each specific product in your catalog. Name your products and write your short and long descriptions so they are effective for selling to visitors and optimizing for search engines.

Based on your product and category names and descriptions, ProStores will automatically populate your store meta tags with this information—an essential step in optimizing your store for natural search.

4. Category Names and Descriptions.
Text-based category names in your navigation that include keywords and links to a list of relevant products that also contain keywords in the product names and short descriptions is highly desirable for search engines. Optimize for broader keyword phrases by choosing descriptive category names and using ProStores category descriptions.

5. All Dynamic and No Dead Ends.
There is no need to create static pages for your ProStores store and insert them among your dynamically created ProStores pages. Doing this can actually be detrimental. The major search engines’ robots are very effective at digging deep into even the largest product catalogs.

You should, however, make use of ProStores’ built-in customer service pages—and your home page welcome text—to provide content about your products and what makes your store unique. Not only does this help keep your customers interested, the relevant keywords on these pages help improve your ranking: quality, useful content is essential!

6. Keep it Fresh.
The major search engines recognize fresh and timely content and will reward you with improved results. Continue to work on improving your product descriptions, welcome text and other information pages using timely content that references holidays or popular current events.

Use ProStores’ featured product and category functionality on your ProStores home page and change the products and categories regularly.

7. Measure Your Effectiveness.
The best measurement is not simply an increase in traffic to your store, but an increase in converting those additional visitors to buyers. Track your changes and updates to see what’s working and what isn’t. Use the built-in Urchin Site Analyzer reporting tools, included with ProStores Business tier and above and look into adding conversion tracking with Google Analytics or other third party web analytics tool.

In wrapping up, optimizing your store for the major search engines is complex work, but it is not black magic. Invest time into researching the best practices for site optimization and implement what you learn as you go. It may, and likely will, take months to thoroughly optimize your store and for the search engines to completely index your catalog. But if you do it right, the payoff is achieving your sales goals.