osCommerce Webmaster's Guide to Selling Online: Increase your sales and profits with expert tips on SEO, Marketing, Design, Selling Strategies, etc. (Paperback)

by Vadym Gurevych (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
Increase your sales and profits with expert tips on SEO, Marketing, Design, Selling Strategies, etc.

• Turn your e-commerce site into a money-making enterprise
• Full of practical tips and tricks to improve profit with osCommerce
• Professional advice on choosing the best contributions

In Detail

If you have an osCommerce-based online business, you need this book. Packed with expert guidance on all aspects of building a better online, this book will make your store stand out from the crowd.

All approaches and techniques described here are proven to have worked well for successful osCommerce-based online businesses among the, over 650, all around the globe with which the author has been actively involved as developer, project manager, or online business consultant.

osCommerce is an open-source e-commerce solution written in PHP and MySQL that can be set up on various platforms. More than 10,000 businesses and sole traders all around the world benefit from its features and flexibility. The importance of the osCommerce community consisting of over 100,000 can not be stressed enough as this is where both online merchants and web developers can communicate and find solutions. There are many "contributions" -- modules for osCommerce that further extend its functionality -- making it suitable for almost every business's requirements.

What you will learn from this book?

• Calculate and monitor profits
• Monitor and track efficiency of advertising campaigns
• Optimize your osCommerce online store for search engines
• Internal and External Search Engine Optimization (SEO):
• Getting popular on search engines
• Web page optimization
• Structure and dynamic content
• Keyword selection
• Back-linking strategies
• Make your SEO campaigns pay off
• Superb ideas for appealing store design
• Reach profitable new markets by fine-tuning your product catalog
• Best practices for product listing and product information pages
• Build and maintain customer confidence
• Run a properly planned promotion campaign
• Use and extend the reporting facility of osCommerce
• Practical insights on creating custom reports
• Improve your process and efficiency while maintaining business profitability
• Convert customers into repeat customers

Approach

Packed with expert advice and practical examples of effective store design and report creation to help you make better decisions, formulate more effective strategies, and measure your success.

Who this book is written for?

This book is for anyone administering an osCommerce site, including webmasters, content managers, store owners, and marketing managers, who do not need to understand PHP or MySQL to benefit from this book. The tips and techniques described in this book can be applied to any small, medium sized e-commerce site.

This is not an implementation guide; developers implementing osCommerce-based e-commerce sites would benefit from reading Deep Inside osCommerce: The Cookbook.

About the Author
Vadym Gurevych

Vadym Gurevych holds a Masters of Software Development degree from Kharkov National Technical University (Ukraine) and has been creating commercial software products for businesses for 10 years. His interest in learning more about the management and business side of the process led him to join the DataLink UK Ltd. in 2001 as Project Manager. Based in the UK, Datalink (which also trades as Holbi) concentrates on providing a wide range of bespoke e-commerce solutions to its local and international customers. In those days Vadym didn't imagine managing open-source projects, but since 2002 he has been creating osCommerce-based sites and this has become Datalink's main source of revenue since 2004. Now Managing Director of DataLink UK Ltd., Vadym is responsible for strategy development and business decisions, and for ensuring that his team of 30 provides customers with the most efficient solutions. Since he finds it exciting and sometimes challenging, he still personally supervises major sales deals and manages major projects. He has been happily married to his wife Elena for almost eight years now, and also finds time to write/maintain a popular blog, osCommerceBlog.com, and contribute to DatalinkUK.com and Holbi.co.uk. Vadym writes: "Talking to a customer, finding out the best solution for the business, making sure that solution is properly implemented, and seeing the business improving - is what brings satisfaction and makes me happy about the way my career has developed to date."

Product Details

• Paperback: 428 pages
• Publisher: Packt Publishing (December 30, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1847192025
• ISBN-13: 978-1847192028
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,017,474 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars general purpose advice on running a commercial website, February 4, 2008

By	W Boudville (Terra, Sol 3) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Let's be clear about one thing. The book is not about running a general purpose website that is selling things. It pertains to those sites using the osCommerce software. This provides a programmatic framework with features needed by many small commercial websites.

But it turns out that several key sections of the book do offer advice germane to anyone wanting to sell on the web. One topic is whether you should join various organisations that will certify your website as reputable. Truste, BBBonline, VeriSign, GeoTrust and others are mentioned. These let you put a seal (a clickable image) on your webpages. So that if a reader clicks on it, it will go to that organisation's server and popup a page attesting that your website is an accredited member. The book's coverage of the top companies offering such certifications is good. Another topic well covered is how to provide search results from searches done within your database of products. Here, osCommerce naturally comes with an internal search option.

Search Engine Optimisation is another topic extensively discussed. This is where you try to get your webpages listed as prominently as possible in the (free) results of major search engines. Tips are given, including how to avoid getting blacklisted by the search engines for being an SEO spammer. (Naughty, naughty!)

Unfortunately, a failing of the book is a poorly done index. For example, on the subject of certificates, SSL, seals or any of those certifying organisations, there simply are no entries in the index. Another example is the omission of link farms or spam from the index, even though these are discussed in the text.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This is a Must Have for anyone using osCommerce!, January 17, 2008

By	Scott Lawrence "Snerdey Web Designs" (Austin, Texas USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

osCommerce Webmaster's Guide to Selling Online Just got the book the other day. It was sent to us to review by the publishing company PACKT, a UK based company. We are osCommerce webdesigners also sell a ton of osCommerce Templates on our website, just search Snerdey. It's easy to tell that the author, Vadym Gurevych, really knows this product inside and out. It was interesting to read and the addition of sample coding made it simple to understand.

I've already highlighted several sections that I'm going to make sure our team goes over this to come up with a new plan of attack for SEO as our clients demand cutting edge technology as well as real results.

I think this book is a huge plus for both the site owner and the seasoned webmasters.

Get yourself a copy. It's about 380 pages or so and 12 chapters. Easy reading and not full of technical jargon just really good information that I'm sure our competitors don't want out of the bag!

Respectfully,
Snerdey

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Secrets to the internet unlocked, February 4, 2008

By	Steve Jay - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Wow what a book every OSC webmaster needs this little book of tips and tricks. Tons of super ideas in this book. This book will make you rethink your entire operation. Too bad some big secrets were published in this book. The internet race is about to heat up.