One of our new staff members pointed me to Seer Interactive’s site– and I liked what I found. Here is a company focused on getting real results from the web for their clients- much like us.

They dissect Nike.com as an example of how to be too slick for search- I’ve only quoted the first 2 mistakes- but, the whole article is worthy of a read.

If you are wondering how well you do on search- look at your keyword search stats- and see how diverse it is- if everything has your brand name in it- and none of your competition you should be instantly worried!

Overall, big brands typically screw up search in two big ways, and Nike is no different:1. Missing out on long-tail terms: If you are not familiar with the term “Long Tail” as it relates to search, you can get the basic idea from a blog post by the search Granddaddy himself, Danny Sullivan.

Typically, big brands want to target the big unbranded terms like “tennis rackets,” “golf clubs,” or “running shoes.” I do recommend that they target such terms as a way to position their brand in the minds of people who are searching, but they often miss terms like “golf club reviews” or “women’s trail running shoes.” Typically, these long-tail terms are the ones that convert best.

Even worse, in Nike’s case, it doesn’t show up in the top 10 for the term “Nike trail shoes.” That is a term that includes its brand name. This happens a lot with Nike branded search terms. If I were Nike, I would start on the branded terms because they are the easiest to rank well for given its existing Web assets. They are most definitely the low-hanging fruit, just waiting to be plucked. People searching for products using the word Nike in their search are already familiar with the brand and are probably calling out for you to show up—but there’s Nike, hiding from them on page 80!

2. All-Flash sites with no alternative version: Does it make sense to spend significant amounts of money on heavily Flashed branded sites—but not on driving people who know the brand to the branded site using organic (natural) search engine optimization… AKA free clicks?

So maybe you are saying… “Hey Wil, maybe Nike doesn’t want to use search at all in their marketing.” I thought about that. When I did a search on Google for “Air Max,” I got this page:

Nike is paying to be in a top position on PPC, which means that search matters as a way of gaining exposure, brand awareness, and possibly, just maybe, sales. But when I clicked on the PPC link for “Air Max,” I was taken to the Nike store homepage.

see the whole article here: Eight ways Big Brands Screw up Search – A case study: Nike.com

We’ve been railing on Crispin Porter Bogusky build websites for the very same reason- and a quick search on vdub rocks in Google has The Next Wave above them – except for the paid placement above.

There is no reason to pay Google for search results- if you take our Websitetology seminar.

There are a few good reasons to use Flash from Adobe (originally Macromedia) on a site. Most have to do with when you need to integrate time, motion and sound together. Step-by-step procedures work great- as does my favorite class example from the ACLU on what happens when the web goes too far: Pizza

The problem with Flash is that you can’t bookmark specific parts of the embedded movie- or select and read the type.

The following article has some tips on how to make it work- sort of- and how to use Flash to render type for callouts and headlines- using a neat technology called sIFR, but even with all these extra steps- the best solution for search- which means traffic and customers, is to skip Flash if at all possible.

Creating a More Search Engine Friendly Flash Web Site – MarketPosition
Most SEOs and many web designers know that Flash based web sites are a challenge not only to get indexed but to even get the site or pages to rank well in the search engines.

Please note- one of the main ways we drive traffic to our main site, www.thenextwave.biz is by placing a list of our competition on the site in a readable format. Most ad agencies love Flash- which makes them invisible. Good for us, bad for companies that are supposed to be experts at exposing a message to the masses.

While many bloggers are cashing in on paid advertising and affiliate fees, the options for setting up small shops is limited by “plugin” store solutions. WordPress is great for building community, the ideal way to target your customers, but when it comes to adding a simple solution you are limited to the three main options available now:
MicroShop
by Owen Winkler (RedAlt) which is currently down. It is the shopping cart I use on Websitetology. Current link: http://www.websitetology.com/wp-content/uploads/microshop.zip
Paypal or checks only, it has some issues with data entry in the phone field, and has limited tax, shipping, and notation options.

Note: June 08 This solution was pre WordPress 2.0, it’s highly unlikely that it still works.
WP-Shop
http://cregy.net/small-business-software/wp-shop/
Last time I installed this, there was no payment gateway. It was the nicest integration of the three, but without checkout, it was worthless. Since I haven’t tried to use it since June, I can’t tell you what the status is now.

UPDATE: June 08, this plugin seems to be abandoned.
WP e-commerce lite
http://www.instinct.co.nz/e-commerce/
We’re using this on www.londonbaystationery.com. It has no way of setting tax per order, or shipping charges. The only included gateway is PayPal, for a fee you can add authorize.net and dps.co.nz

UPDATE: Jun 09 This plugin broke again with 2.8. It’s been a constant headache.

We broke down and purchased the Shopp plugin http://shopplugin.net/ it works flawlessly with 2.8.

We also looked at e-shop, http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/eshop/ but, we failed to rename the product page, and were in limbo for a while. It requires a page per post, which may or may not be a graceful way to handle things.

E-commerce with a WordPress shouldn’t be that difficult. While most of these solutions are limited to using WordPress with a PayPal solution, the ability to use other payment processors like 2checkout.com or google checkout should be available. WordPress is the easiest way to build a community- so shouldn’t it be just as easy to sell to your community?
A more complex option is to build a ZenCart site and add a WordPress blog to it with this module:
http://zencart-module.s-page.net/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=2&products_id

JUNE 08: Another open source option that looks good for a cart is Magento: http://www.magentocommerce.com/features

There isn’t a WordPress module- or integration- but, it’s getting rave reviews as a well written piece of code.

There must be other shopping cart plugins out there- but this is what we’ve found. If you have any others, please leave a link in the comments.

UPDATE: Jun 09 found this link with 10 shopping cart tools for WordPress  http://speckyboy.com/2008/10/23/10-powerful-shoppingecommerce-plugin-solutions-for-wordpress/

UPDATE: Apr 8 2010: Here is a comparison chart of carts: http://www.briggs.net.nz/log/2009/09/13/warts-and-all/