Assisting Entrepreneurs with
E-Commerce Strategies
Alan Barefield
University of Tennessee
Agricultural Extension Service
Agricultural Extension Service
The University of Tennessee
Steps for getting online
Planning Your Web Site
 Finding a Web Hosting Provider
 Registering your Domain Name
 Selling On-line
 Creating your Site
 Attracting Customers to Your Site

Agricultural Extension Service
The University of Tennessee
Planning your site
What do you want to do?
 What kind of site do you need?
 How much do you have to spend?
 Look at your competition
 Storyboarding
 DIY or contract it out

Agricultural Extension Service
The University of Tennessee
Finding a web hosting provider

Types of providers
 Internet
Service Provider (ISP)
 Free Web Hosting Services
 Virtual Server
 Dedicated/Co-located

Locating a provider
Agricultural Extension Service
The University of Tennessee
Considerations for finding a provider

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
Cost
Access Speed
Types of Servers Used
Redundant Connections
Bandwidth Allocation
Customer Support
Access to Web Files
Features
Experience
Agricultural Extension Service
The University of Tennessee
Registering a domain name

Domain Name as Business Name
 Easy
to Remember
 Short but Meaningful
 Name Variations
Name Types (.com, .net, .org, .biz)
 Whois Search

Agricultural Extension Service
The University of Tennessee
Selling online
Affiliate Programs
 Payment Processing Services
 On-line Auctions
 eShops/Malls
 Merchant Accounts
 Shopping Carts

Agricultural Extension Service
The University of Tennessee
Creating your site

Tools

Templates

Style Manuals

Usability/Accessibility
Agricultural Extension Service
The University of Tennessee
Attracting customers to your site

Advertise Everywhere
 E-Mail

Marketing
Search Engine Submission
 Refine
Meta Tags, Title, Descriptions & Home Page
 Tools to help you

How do you maintain your site?
 Is
Your Content Fresh?
 Reviewing Your Site
Agricultural Extension Service
The University of Tennessee
Why use e-commerce?

An e-commerce strategy can have many
goals
 Increased
market share
 Increased market size
 Increased market potential & feasibility
 Increased market perception
 Increased company profits
Agricultural Extension Service
The University of Tennessee
E-commerce strategies
Consumer education
 Product information
 Technical specifications
 Product support
 Customer assistance
 Purchase facillitation

Agricultural Extension Service
The University of Tennessee
E-commerce Components
Part I
search engines
Part II
visibility
Part III
email
marketing
Agricultural Extension Service
The University of Tennessee
Part IV
everything else
What clients need to know
about search engines
There are only nine search engines that
really matter
 Understand search engines and how they
are used
 This enables you to understand how
people use search engines
 Carefully prepare your website before
search engine submission

Agricultural Extension Service
The University of Tennessee
What clients need to know
about search engines
Submitting pages to the various search
engines takes very little time, usually only
about ten minutes
 The only person that can effectively
submit a website to the search engine is
the person that best understands the
company

Agricultural Extension Service
The University of Tennessee
Search engines that really matter
AltaVista
Google
Inktomi
Fast
Excite
Hotbot
Lycos
Northern Light
Direct Hit
Agricultural Extension Service
The University of Tennessee
How do search engines work?
user
database
Agricultural Extension Service
The University of Tennessee
How do search engines work?
database
company
owner
submit URL
Agricultural Extension Service
The University of Tennessee
How do search engines work?
user
database
submit URL
company
owner
Agricultural Extension Service
The University of Tennessee
Search engine example
Agricultural Extension Service
The University of Tennessee
Directories that really matter

Yahoo!
 If
you are a business, you must pay a submission fee
to be reviewed
 A one-time fee of $299 is required
 It is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to revise a
Yahoo! Directory listing
 https://ecom.yahoo.com/fast/add


Looksmart
Open Directory
Agricultural Extension Service
The University of Tennessee
How directories work
user
database
Agricultural Extension Service
The University of Tennessee
How directories work
reviewer
database
$$$$
submit URL
company
owner
Agricultural Extension Service
The University of Tennessee
How directories work
user
reviewer
database
$$$$
submit URL
company
owner
Agricultural Extension Service
The University of Tennessee
Directory example
Agricultural Extension Service
The University of Tennessee
How do users search the web?
They typically start with broad, general
terms
 When 10,000,000 websites are returned,
they use additional terms to narrow the
search
 They typically don’t search for a company
name
 They almost never search for the term
“Welcome To”

Agricultural Extension Service
The University of Tennessee
Preparing your site to get found
(this is the hardest part)

Choose ten words that describe your
business, product(s), and/or service(s)

Take your time and plan carefully

Above all, think like a searcher
Agricultural Extension Service
The University of Tennessee
Using html codes wisely

There are three types of html codes to be
concerned with
 html
title
 html description
 html keywords

These codes are the key to the
effectiveness of a website marketing
strategy
Agricultural Extension Service
The University of Tennessee
html title
The html title is the words seen at the top
of the browser window when you access a
web page
 This is not necessarily the banner in the
website content
 It is displayed as the link for a listing on
the search engine

Agricultural Extension Service
The University of Tennessee
Ole Smoky General Store
Agricultural Extension Service
The University of Tennessee
Search engine example
Agricultural Extension Service
The University of Tennessee
Source code
<head>
<title>Ole Smoky General Store Brand Tennessee Ham</title>
<meta NAME="Keywords"
CONTENT="country hams, ham, bacon, country, kitchen, christmas, gifts, cookbooks, Christmas Presents,
gifts">
<meta NAME="DESCRIPTION"
CONTENT="Country Hams, Slab Bacon, and Other Goodies for Your Country Table">
</head>
<body BACKGROUND="graphics/pale3.gif">
<table cellspacing="3" cellpadding="3">
<tr>
<td><a HREF="default.htm"><img SRC="graphics/oslogo.gif" WIDTH="100" HEIGHT="75"
BORDER="0" alt="Return to Ole Smoky Front Porch"></a></td>
<td><strong><font SIZE="-2">Even more bargains galore <br>
at the <a HREF="Default.htm">Ole Smoky General Store</a>!</font><br>
Order on-line or call us: <font COLOR="#FF0000">1-800-453-8788</font></strong></td>
</tr>
</table>
<h2 align="center"><font color="#800000">Country Hams, Slab Bacon, and Other Goodies for
Your Country Table, Camping Trip, Holiday Celebrations</font></h2>
Agricultural Extension Service
The University of Tennessee
html title
 Keep
the title under 75 characters.
 Make each title relevant to its page.
 Spend the most time writing the title for
your home page.
Write a title for the beginning page of each
major website section
 For all other pages, use the beginning
page title(s) or use breadcrumbs

Agricultural Extension Service
The University of Tennessee
Search engine example
Agricultural Extension Service
The University of Tennessee
meta description
The meta description details the content of
a web page.
 It is displayed below the web page title in
the search engine listing.
 Keep it under 150 characters to ensure it
doesn’t get truncated (especially important
with directories).

Agricultural Extension Service
The University of Tennessee
Ole Smoky General Store
Agricultural Extension Service
The University of Tennessee
meta description
Make each description relevant to the
page that it is on.
 Entice potential visitors with clever copy so
they will be prone to click
 It’s not about ranking; it’s about marketing
 Not all search engines use the meta
description

Agricultural Extension Service
The University of Tennessee
Source code
<head>
<title>Ole Smoky General Store Brand Tennessee Ham</title>
<meta NAME="Keywords"
CONTENT="country hams, ham, bacon, country, kitchen, christmas, gifts, cookbooks, Christmas Presents, gifts">
<meta NAME="DESCRIPTION"
CONTENT="Country Hams, Slab Bacon, and Other Goodies for Your Country Table">
</head>
<body BACKGROUND="graphics/pale3.gif">
<table cellspacing="3" cellpadding="3">
<tr>
<td><a HREF="default.htm"><img SRC="graphics/oslogo.gif" WIDTH="100" HEIGHT="75"
BORDER="0" alt="Return to Ole Smoky Front Porch"></a></td>
<td><strong><font SIZE="-2">Even more bargains galore <br>
at the <a HREF="Default.htm">Ole Smoky General Store</a>!</font><br>
Order on-line or call us: <font COLOR="#FF0000">1-800-453-8788</font></strong></td>
</tr>
</table>
<h2 align="center"><font color="#800000">Country Hams, Slab Bacon, and Other Goodies for
Your Country Table, Camping Trip, Holiday Celebrations</font></h2>
Agricultural Extension Service
The University of Tennessee
Search engine example
Agricultural Extension Service
The University of Tennessee
Ole Smoky General Store
Agricultural Extension Service
The University of Tennessee
meta keywords



The meta keywords tag can be the same for all
pages in the website complex
Not all search engines take these tags into
consideration when sites are ranked
Use a list of words and phrases with no
commas (search engine spiders are programmed to read only a certain number of characters in the keyword tag if they read it at all)
Agricultural Extension Service
The University of Tennessee
Use your keywords
Work your keywords into the text copy of
every page as many times as you can
without making it sound ridiculous
 This may sound obvious, but many
company owners don’t follow this advice
 Focusing on keywords when writing the
web page copy can help reduce jargon

Agricultural Extension Service
The University of Tennessee
DON’T





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Use irrelevant keywords in meta tags
Repeat keywords several times in a row
Hide text by making it the same color as the
background
Use a string of keywords for the html title
Submit exact copies of pages with different file
names
Use abbreviations in the keywords unless
abbreviations are commonly used
Send e-mail to search engines
Agricultural Extension Service
The University of Tennessee
Source code
<head>
<title>Ole Smoky General Store Brand Tennessee Ham</title>
<meta NAME="Keywords"
CONTENT="country hams, ham, bacon, country, kitchen, christmas, gifts, cookbooks, Christmas Presents,
gifts">
<meta NAME="DESCRIPTION"
CONTENT="Country Hams, Slab Bacon, and Other Goodies for Your Country Table">
</head>
<body BACKGROUND="graphics/pale3.gif">
<table cellspacing="3" cellpadding="3">
<tr>
<td><a HREF="default.htm"><img SRC="graphics/oslogo.gif" WIDTH="100" HEIGHT="75"
BORDER="0" alt="Return to Ole Smoky Front Porch"></a></td>
<td><strong><font SIZE="-2">Even more bargains galore <br>
at the <a HREF="Default.htm">Ole Smoky General Store</a>!</font><br>
Order on-line or call us: <font COLOR="#FF0000">1-800-453-8788</font></strong></td>
</tr>
</table>
<h2 align="center"><font color="#800000">Country Hams, Slab Bacon, and Other Goodies for
Your Country Table, Camping Trip, Holiday Celebrations</font></h2>
Agricultural Extension Service
The University of Tennessee
Search term suggestions

Go to www.overture.com

Click on Advertiser Login at the bottom
of the page

Click on Search Term Suggestion Tool

Enter a search term in the appropriate field
Agricultural Extension Service
The University of Tennessee
Overture search term suggestions
Agricultural Extension Service
The University of Tennessee
Search term suggestions

Go to www.spellweb.com

Enter the words or phrases you wish to
compare

Choose either the Webcrawler or FAST
search engine
Agricultural Extension Service
The University of Tennessee
Search term suggestions
Agricultural Extension Service
The University of Tennessee
Search term suggestions
Agricultural Extension Service
The University of Tennessee
ALT tags

Every image on your website should have
an ALT tag associated with it

The ALT text is what visitors see if they
move their mouse cursor over the image
Agricultural Extension Service
The University of Tennessee
Search engine submission
Bookmark the pages of the search engine
submission pages or see
http://members.attcanada.ca/
~lillyb/search_engine_submission.html
 Enter the site URL in each submission
page
 If the site is relatively small, submit all
pages

Agricultural Extension Service
The University of Tennessee
Then you wait…
It may take from two to four weeks for your
site to be included in a search engine
database.
 It can take weeks after that before you see
your site appear in the search results.
 Every time the database is re-indexed,
your ranking will change
 Re-submit every month and monitor your
results
Agricultural Extension Service

The University of Tennessee
Don’t pay someone else to
submit your website for you
No one else understands a business as
well as the owner/operator understands it.
 It would take longer for to explain a
business to a stranger than it would for the
owner/operator to submit the site.
 Most submission businesses will submit
the site one time only; you can develop a
site submission program for the cost of
your time

Agricultural Extension Service
The University of Tennessee
Paid inclusion and placement

Paid inclusion  Yahoo
 It’s

Paid inclusion  LookSmart
 If

well worth the investment
you can afford it, pay to be included
Paid placement  GoTo
 Don’t
waste your money; do you use GoTo?
Agricultural Extension Service
The University of Tennessee