» IP Blog: SEO, SMO and Web Development news

Independent Fashion Site Goes Live

Andrew Mabbott — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 13:01:18 +0000

Independent Boutique is an online store for women’s fashion and accessories, showcasing work from the best independent British designers. By selling together through a single platform, designers are able to reach a larger audience, while fashion-conscious shoppers get instant access to the rich talent and creativity the UK fashion industry has to offer through a single-branded environment.

Intelligent Positioning’s Web Development team leveraged their experience in building search-friendly e-commerce websites to create a fully-bespoke sales platform to meet the particular requirements of Independent Boutique. The projected presented a number of challenges including ensuring ease of use for sellers in managing their inventories and handling transactions, fully moderated product approval, searchable faceted navigation through the product catalogue and seamless integration with a WordPress blog.

Utilising artwork supplied by a graphic designer, Intelligent Positioning guided the project through to successful delivery. Services included:

Project management
Requirements gathering
Architecture development
Bespoke web application design and implementation
Payment gateway integration
Deployment and hosting
Training

Woolworths Online Going Down

Jon — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 16:18:31 +0000

Woolworths – Company Focus. Woolworths has obviously had a bad time of things lately.
With the company going into administration and the 1000s of employees facing unemployment just weeks before Christmas, it’s not been happy reading. Woolworths Decline.

However, one shining light for the Woolworths brand over the last 12 months has been their online presence. Whether or not they have been selling products through their website is another discussion, but their positioning in the search engines has been good –

and for certain keywords, it has been excellent.

But then this happened:

The Reason: Woolworths Website holding page throughout the site

This appears on every page linked to. So all the readable content has gone, all meta and all internal links. This blank page is all Google sees. Furthermore bounce rate is therefore 100% and we all know what that means.

Woolworths' keywords fell off a cliff in mid November in Google UK

Previously Woolies was in the top five SERPS for “Toys” “Outdoor Toys” “camp Rock” and many other children’s related purchases. At Christmas, these would be searched millions of times and the purchase rate is for many retailers better in December than for the rest of the year put together. So why did they take the site down?

As you will see above from our Keyword line tracker Woolworths.co.uk the effect of the maintenance page is stark. Woollies online has now taken the same hit as its fellow High Street Stores have – and fallen off a cliff.

Is there a way back?

The Woolies site was getting some very good positons, and closing it down like this, before the business has properly shut-up shop, seems premature. Furthermore, the site itself had a PageRank of 5, certainly a sellable asset to anyone in retail.

But what we can conlude from this is that links, by themselves, will not get you good results.

John Lewis sees Record Online Sales

Jon — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 10:05:26 +0000

It is not all doom and gloom in retail at the moment. The High Street may be daubed in big reduction offers mixed with a certain malaise, but online seems a happier, more relaxed and confident place to be.

John Lewis, one of the UK’s biggest department stores, reconfirmed this thought. Sales at John Lewis stores rose 20% last week, compared to the previous week, and online sales hit record levels.

John Lewis said that it had seen a “significant improvement” to sales over the week to December 6, with kidswear and toys, along with home furnishings and home entertainment, performing well.

The company said that the combination of the passing on of the VAT reduction and their price matching policy had contributed to the rise. John Lewis said that it had beaten last year’s record online sales week by half a million pounds.

The biggest online sales week starts with the second Monday of December, dubbed “Mega Monday” and ends around ten days before Christmas. Internet sales were driven by demand for gifts, Christmas decorations, furnishing accessories, home electronics and toys.

John Lewis director of selling operations Nat Wakely said: “This week’s much stronger sales have borne out our belief that John Lewis’ strong and innovative Christmas products, customer service and price matching will ensure our continued position as a market leader over the festive period.

He added: “The next two weeks are absolutely crucial for us and all high street retailers but we are confident that the upward sales trend will continue.”

Intelligent Postioning will be doing a report on John Lewis shortly, to see if there is scope for bettering these figures with quality SEO. Watch this space for more details.

Is today going to be Mega Mega Monday?

Jon — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 10:00:50 +0000

The credit crunch doesn’t seem to be effecting online sales as much as the High street, with recent reports of record sales over the internet. The second Monday of December has been dubbed Mega Monday for being the biggest online shopping day of the year.

The latest Mega Monday (8th December) did not disappoint. Last week’s sales showed a rise of 14 percent on the same day last year, taking the day’s earnings to £320 million the IMRG stated. That’s a £20 million rise, with total products bought, up 18%.

On Monday more than £1 million was spent in a minute, according to Retail Decisions, a payment processing firm. Spending online peaked at 1.00pm on this ‘Mega Monday’ as online sales are expected to hit £13 billion this Christmas – a 15% increase on last year.

The second Monday has been highlighted as a successful day because it is one of the last shopping days before Christmas for online shoppers due to delivery times and being sure the presents will arrive. Furthermore to many shoppers, the Monday, at their PCs is probably the perfect remedy for the previous weekend spent at the shop tills of our busy high streets and shopping centres.

But the IMRG said that with delivery times improving, there was still time for a stronger performance.

“We may even see next Monday being bigger still, which would be the first time ever that the third Monday in December marked the year’s peak,” it said.

So today could be Mega-Mega Monday? Let’s wait and see for the results and find out whether online shopping is in rude health.

Either way we are given reconfirmation that online sales are holding their own in the face of high street malaise. And it reiterates the fact that if you’re easily found online for your key products, through intelligent SEO business could be a lot easier.