Shopify vs BigCommerce vs Lemonstand vs Yahoo
-
Have any of you moz folks recently had experience deciding where to build a small ecommerce site and had considered the following:
- Shopify
- Big Commerce
- Lemonstand
- Yahoo
Our site has been on Yahoo for 12 years. And I've seen designers the last several really complain about the limitations of customizing Yahoo stores and the checkout pages. Going to be creating a new ecommerce site for jewelry and thinking we should consider another platform.
Things like built in responsive design, ability to customize checkout, customize store easily without RTML (Yahoo proprietary language - not many developers use it), ability to scale up if needed, but affordable for entry, conversion optimization best practices built in, ability for good seo built in without having to use 3rd party. (Another crappy limitation of Yahoo stores is that they do NOT support a blog as part of the domain, ie, www.domain.com/blog.html which is much better for seo than their way - blog.domain.com)
I read on Rich Page's blog that he likes BigCommerce. I've spoken with Lemonstand and they have a lot of fashion sites using their new platform, and I'm seeing lots of new sites spring up using Shopify.
Any feedback would be greatly appreciated! I'm sure there are a bunch of folks like me that have similar decisions to make now.
Thanks!
Ron
-
No problem, I am one of their community moderators for their forum, so if you have any questions like if something can be done with it; you can send me at http://dh42.com/contact/ ( I hope this is ok, I don't want to put my main email address out to get scraped). I can let you know if something is a stock feature or not. Because with the hosted platforms like Shopify, Lemonstand, and BigCommerce the features are limited because you do not have access to the core application. With something like Prestashop or Magento for that matter since you have access, you can really do anything your budget allows.
-
Thanks Leslie. I'll check out Prestashop, I am not familiar with them. I'll reach out to you for more info on this.
Appreciate your help!
-
This falls out of the bound of which platforms you mentioned, but you should give Prestashop a shake. It is on the level with the other platforms you mentioned and more than likely ahead of them. It is OSS so it is free, all you have to pay for is your hosting.
I have a couple of jewelry store clients running Prestashop and it does very well with them. One of them has features such as 3d product rotation and where you can design pieces with what ever stone you choose and metal.
As far as SEO most all newer platforms are on the same level, which means the SEO of the platform means little to nothing. You have to do the SEO yourself with every platform.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Time to purchase vs Time Lag for business cycle data
Hi All, Using just GA is it possible to get accurate information about buying cycle duration - i.e. length of time from first interaction to purchase? Time to purchase isn't what I'm looking for as it does not include direct visits. Time lag seems off as it suggests that the majority of conversions happen on day 0 (as does time to purchase). I know that any conversions outside of the time window default to 0 but I find it hard to believe that a clothing retailer has a similar buying cycle to a furniture store. Of course I could be wrong here, I'm making a big assumption. Neither report feels very robust to use for estimating split testing duration requirements. I know that there are other methods available, by comparing raw clickstream / cookie data but I do not have this data available, nor do I have the time to get it. Any info / advice would be great. Thanks
Conversion Rate Optimization | | datarat0 -
Bounce rate vs main domain and subdomain
So there is a website www.domainname.com that is based on wordpress. Basically this site has 8-10 pages but it is not a blog. And it has a subdomain mystore.domainname.com which is based on magento. While developing the site the circumstances were such that we had to use a subdomain for ecommerce based on magento. So the wp site is ranking and people are landing on that site. It makes sense when it has a bounce rate of around 72% because people are actually going to the subdomain ( store ) after they land on the wp site. Because they are actually looking to buy. My question is will this bounce rate affect in ranking of the wp site ? Because for now only the wp site is ranking for most of the terms. Should i consider removing the wp site and have the whole site based on magento ? I appreciate any kind of feedback and suggestion 🙂
Conversion Rate Optimization | | MindlessWizard0 -
Modified broad match vs phrase match strategy - Google Adwords
Hi All, I am looking through a client account that is very mature (10+ years running) on Google AdWords. As soon as it became available, this client adopted a modified broad match (MBM) strategy and has removed all phrase match and exact match keyword types. The account has hundreds of thousands of active keywords. Over the past few years, the CPCs have been rising. While I know that market values of keywords in general have risen consistently year after year, I speculate that this client is actually causing their own prices to go up faster than they should. I have a couple of questions regarding strategy that I am considering that I want to know if anyone else has any experience with... by having many MBM versions of the same keyword, is it possible for cannibalization to occur for most of the variations? Example query: new red running shoes
Conversion Rate Optimization | | dsinger
variations Ad group 1: +red running shoes, +red +running shoes, red +running +shoes, red running +shoes
variations ad group 2: +blue running shoes, +blue +running shoes, blue +running +shoes, blue running +shoes based on the logic of MBM, the possible matches to this query from the available variations are +red running shoes, +red +running shoes, red +running +shoes, red running +shoes, blue +running +shoes, blue running +shoes. So, if the performance of those blue variations trump the more closely related red variations, this searcher may actually see an ad about blue running shoes, even though they have indicated they are more interested in red. in terms of cost, I would anticipate that MBM keywords are more expensive than their phrase match counterparts. can anyone confirm or deny this? My thoughts are that with several years of actual search terms being collected, this client should be able to do a great job of covering almost every variation of keyword that customers have used and create a strong list of phrase match keywords to satisfy all relevant queries. MBM keywords seem like they are a lazy way of getting traffic at a higher cost that can actually cannibalize close variations that exist in the account, causing the wrong ad to be shown based on matching/relevancy and a higher price CPC in the long run. Thoughts?1 -
Brand Name: Conversion Rate Optimizing: Eponymous VS Generic
Good day all, We are entertaining the idea of changing the Domain Name & Brand Name for straplessfashion.com. While still in development, the website sells women undergarments. We did some survey research and it seems that women (age 18-40) really liked either "Demi's Dream" or "Almost Skin" as a good name. More specifically, Almost Skin seems to be the more popular choice over "Demi's Dream". I think "Almost Skin" catches attention quicker and may work best in PPC. However, when personalizing a brand name is considered, "Demi's Dream" might be the best choice. Would you please offer your advise on which of these two names might be the best for a new Domain and Brand name for the website mentioned above? Which would convert better? Thank you for your help. Carlos
Conversion Rate Optimization | | 90miLLA0 -
Microsites vs. one site
My client has created a product that he wants to market to two, very different, audiences. The goal is to funnel them through the site and get them to purchase. My question is about the best SEO strategy on how to do this effectively. Since they are distinct audiences with little in common we've recommended building two microsites, and optimizing each with unique content and different keyword focus. I realize it will be harder to optimize two sites rather than one, but it seems to make sense from a user perspective. But once the users goes to a "non-audience specific" page, like any page that is about the product or company and not about the audience, should we build yet a third website that houses the "company/product pages" and channel the conversions there in order to avoid having duplicate content on the two other sites? Or should we put the same "company pages" on both the Audience A and Audience B websites, only vary the text so it doesn't look like duplicate content. Or is the microsite strategy flawed all together? Please keep in mind this is a brand new product and it has national scope. There is no local focus. We will be building their rankings entirely from scratch. I REALLY appreciate any insights you may have. We have been going around and around about this. Thanks
Conversion Rate Optimization | | ptdodge0 -
Contact Forms Vs Email Enquiries
This is a usability question more than SEO but I thought this community would be the one to ask. Are completed conversion rates generally higher for contact forms or email enquiries? I try to encourage our clients to have short contact forms where possible to ensure the first contact (ask questions later). Personally an email seems like a giant daunting and potentially irrelevant enquiry that could get lost in the plethora of spam emails flying around. Also half the time I start the email and then give up.
Conversion Rate Optimization | | SoundinTheory0 -
How accurate is the Geo-Targeting of Google and Bing/Yahoo PPC ads?
I have a client who serves a local market and who has had trouble in the past with people out of her service area clicking on ads. She asked how accurate the geo-targeting option is. I know it's not possible to be completely accurate resolving the location of IP addresses, but was wondering if there are any recent statistics out there regarding how accurate or inaccurate geo-targeting is. I did some quick searches but did not see any current numbers. Many Thanks!
Conversion Rate Optimization | | JKuly0 -
Page Title Tags - SEO vs CRO ?
Hi everyone, Thanks to what seems to be a recent(ish) algo change in Google, some of our more targeted deeper pages are ranking for search terms where before only our homepage would rank. This is of course great however I am a little worried that some of the page titles of our internal pages are a little short, for example our main departments (we are an ecommerce store) are titles 'Department Name | Liberty Games' so for example 'Pool Tables | Liberty Games'. I have heard varying reports on what to do with the title tag, I have heard to keep the most relevant keywords to the left of the tag, which we have done, I have also heard that shorter is better. I am just a bit concerned that our tags are looking a little stumpy in the serps alongside other results which are longer (although admittedly a bit keyword stuffed). So (eventually) my question is, will short titles harm my click-through rate ? but are shorter titles better for SEO ? If longer is better are there any recommendations about what I could add to these titles that could potentially help click-throughs and natural rankings ? Many thanks, Stuart
Conversion Rate Optimization | | stukerr1