Press releases are a great tool for boosting e-commerce search engine rankings – but don`t think that you can get away with a lame release about new products or new designs.

Your key to all-important press coverage is to make things as news-worthy as possible.

To do this, you should find the websites in your field that discuss industry news. Find out what are the current hot topics and try to use an RSS feed to keep in touch with daily news.

The minute you spot a good (or bad) piece of news, this is the time to write up a press release linking the topic to your own website or business. It can be as vague as you like but if you’re first out with the press release, there’s more chance a blogger or news editor will pick up your story.

Fruity number

So, for example, you are a company doing a great trade in local, organic strawberries. You also sell farm-made berry products on your website. A story hits your country’s fruit growing association to say that strawberry yields are the best for a decade.

Now is your opportunity: Get your PR contact to put together a press release that reveals the high level of strawberry yields, and includes detail of your own farm’s produce plus a comment or quote from the farm manager. Add in your website details, too. Then stick this press release on your website and ping it via email to a few contacts.

It’s likely that you’ll get press coverage – and benefit from the wider distribution of your website details on the internet.

Just remember to keep your press releases current, newsworthy and to the point.

If you write a web article or a blog first and then throw on a headline you could be making a huge mistake.

According to research on average 80% of people will read a headline, but only 20% will read the rest of the copy. Therefore, what you write in your headline has the power to attract or put off readers.

Listen to the facts

In some cases a good headline could be the difference between a few hits and hundreds of thousands.

An example of this was an article on Condomunity (www.condomunity.com) reporting statistics showing 19 countries and their respective prices for Durex condoms.

The headline on the site read: “Cheap Condoms, Expensive Condoms”.

But then another website, Environmental Graffiti picked up the story and changed the headline to “World’s Most Expensive Places to Have Sex”.

Now doesn’t the second headline seem so much more enthralling and interesting?

It certainly proved to be the case: While Condomunity received five to 10 visits a day for their headline, Environmental Graffiti had 100,000 visits and 3000 links in three weeks.

First impressions count

A headline is the first, and perhaps the only, impression you will make on a prospective reader and without a great headline or post title the rest of your article may as well not even exist.

So, it’s vital that you write your headline first, before you embark on the full article.

Your headline will also gain a wider audience if you make it strong and focused. Ideally the header should sum up the story in a concise and compelling way with minimum words but maximum impact.

It is not necessary to be clever or smart with a headline – and the puns that you’d most often see in tabloid newspapers do not usually work on the internet where you have only a few seconds to grad a reader’s attention.

And don’t lie. A headline that promises something but then fails to deliver in the copy will not have a reader coming back to your site.

How to write a headline

The best way to write a headline is to keep it simple. Tell the reader what it is you want to sell, write about, inform them about.

Seven of the best headline styles:

Direct headline: Get straight to the point.

Eg. Car for sale – £6,000

Indirect headline: It’s more subtle but very intriguing.

Eg. Tesco Butter Up Young Shoppers

News headline: This informs the reader about a current hot topic or must-read news item.

Eg. SNP leader Alex Salmond interview

What Google’s Matt Cutts see in 2009

Company sues Google over copyright infringement

“How to” headline: Everyone wants to know “how to” do something new.

Eg How to write a winning headline

Question headline: This asks a question but also prompts the reader to empathise with the topic.

Eg. Would you ask a stranger where he bought his cowboy boots?

Are you ready to become a singing superstar?

“Ways to” headline: These are intriguing to a reader because they offer a list and

added value.

Eg. 20 ways to stuff a turkey

Quote headline: These offer a testimonial, and therefore make readers feel there is more to a product or a topic.

Eg. “I wouldn’t eat any other kid of egg,” says Jamie Oliver

“I swear by xxxx tennis balls,” confesses Venus Williams

“WebCreationUK is top of my Santa list,” says Bill Gates

Get the headline right and 80% of people will read on. Get it wrong and you’ve lost 20% of web visitors. Try it and see.

In a move projected to strengthen the UK economy, the Chancellor has this afternoon announced that the standard rate of VAT (Value Added Tax) will be cut from the 1st of December 2008 for 13 months. The previous rate of 17.5% has been cut to 15% to encourage consumer spending and stimulate demand.

While it should have this effect, it has also been labelled a ‘retailer nightmare’ as thousands of shops up-and-down the country are faced with re-labelling their products. Luckily for an e-commerce store, this process can be as simple as flicking a switch

Most stores have a setting for VAT which can be easily changed via an administration area giving a considerable advantage over offline retailers.  Not that this is all plain-sailing however; you will still need to check that your pricing is consistent if you do have an offline presence such as a mail-order catalogue or store.

Whether this will indeed result in more custom is a matter of conjecture. If your standard product retails at say £100 including VAT then a customer will save about £2.23 if the full saving is passed on to the customer, hardly enough to make them buy a few more.  It also seems likely that many retailers will elect to ‘absorb’ these savings into prices. Also, if your customers are mainly businesses with balanced outgoings then the VAT change is largely neutral.

Either way in what was expected to be a good Christmas for online businesses, despite the Credit Crunch any additional stimulus can only be a good thing – just make sure you save a little back for when taxes go back up in the near future…

Even the smallest things are worthy of consideration when it comes to designing the most user-friendly website.

Take, for example, the seemingly humble asterisk. When used as a “required form indicator” should the pretty little star symbol be located to the right of the input field, between the label and the form field, or to the left of the label.

Not sure yourself? Well, one design blogger has gone to the trouble of surveying a host of those-in-the-know to find out the most common placement for the asterisk.

The Smiley Cat Blog (www.smileycat.com) reveals that:

- 48% of commenters prefer to put the asterisk to the right of the input field.
- 44% place the asterisk to the right of the form label (between the label and the form field)
- 8% put the asterisk to the left of the label.

These results are similar to those found by Luke Wroblewski, the author of a book on the subject called Web Form Design: Filling in the Blanks.

Does anyone think that asterisk placement actually matters? Especially when it is so often highlighted in red.

Everyone wants to know how to improve their website’s ranking on search engine biggie Google. But most of the time it feels like one giant lottery.

Even when certain questions are put straight to the guys at Google, Matt Cutts and Maile Ohye, we’re still no surer of the correct answer.

During a recent live chat with webmasters from around the world this question came up:

Does the age of a website/domain affect its ranking?

This first answer came from Maile
Ohye: “A site’s reputation can be a indicator to search engines, but of course, it’s not everything. Having a site for a long period of time can establish credibility with users, and as a search engine we also want to reflect this type of credibility. Of course, newer domains can also gain users and credibility. It seems like running a good site is a bit like running a reputable business. So yes, if your domain has been credible for years it can help. If you buy an old domain and put all your content on it in hopes of getting instant rankings, that’s not the best idea.”

But, when the question was rephrased, Matt Cutts answered: “In the majority of cases, it actually doesn’t matter – we want to return the best information, not just the oldest information. Especially if you’re a mom/pop site, we try to find ways to rank your site even if your site is newer or doesn’t have many links. I think it is fair for Google to use that as a signal in some circumstances, and I try never to rule a signal out completely, but I wouldn’t obsess about it.”

So what is it guys? Presumably the answer is more like this: “Sometimes age matters, like, when we say it does.”

Did you know?: 
There are about 200 factors that go into determining a site’s ranking in the search results. If only we knew what they all were.

OK, you have your brand-new sparkling site shimmering in the internet-sphere but how do you know how well it is performing for you?

In order to maximise the returns from your website, it is essential you know how visitors are interacting with your site. At the very least this will mean tracking the numbers of visitors and which pages they visit. From our earlier article, you’ll also be tracking the Conversion Rate of customers whether in Sales or Enquiries, but if these fail to materialise at the expected rate then you’ll need some options to improve performance.

Firstly, carry out a non-technical sense check. Ask some basic questions such as:

‘Are visitors making enquiries / sales via another medium ( direct e-mail, phone calls) and are you counting these correctly?’
‘Are there any direct comparisons with the Rate of Return versus other media?’
‘Are all obstacles to conversion removed, are you asking for only the minimum of information?’

If you are satisfied that the fundamentals for these are in place then the next step is to dive in further to some of the visitor data. There are many advanced statistics packages, but one of the best Free packages is Google Analytics. Using these packages you can view items such as Bounce Rate (how many visitors leave your site as soon as they arrive) , Time Spent on Page and even where customers drop out during your sales process.

By analysing these items you can identify which pages are underperforming and address these issues, maybe by rewriting copy or making the next steps move obvious.

Finally you should ensure that you are gathering customer feedback at all levels. Try to include a feedback form or contact detail on every page and actively encourage feedback using appropriate incentives. This feedback can be invaluable in optimising your site for visitors and can often throw up some interesting input that slipped by in the design process.

Once you’ve been through these processes you’ll be approaching a fully-effective website, but don’t sit back. Keep trying new ideas, keep monitoring and you’ll always be one step ahead of the competition.