1. ECOMMERCE
SEO GUIDE
Your Questions Answered

2. Table of Contents
Who contributed to this guide?
It’s hard to get people to link to my store. What are link building
strategies that work for ecommerce stores?
How much copy should you have on a category or collection
page in your ecommerce store? What should it be about?
It’s not feasible to have 1,000 word descriptions of each of my
products. How long should my product descriptions really be?
What are SEO best practices for handling dozens of variations of
the same product?
What does SEO friendly ecommerce site architecture look like?
What is off page SEO? Is it important for an ecommerce store?
Top 10 Ecommerce Blogs
I.
II.
III.
IV.
V.
VI.
VII.
VIII.

3. RICHARD LAZAZZERA |
A BETTER LEMONADE STAND
Richard Lazazzera is an ecommerce
entrepreneur and founder of A Better
Lemonade Stand, an ecommerce
blog and incubator for early stage
entrepreneurs. Learn more about
Richard or get more from him
on Twitter.
KENNY ROSENBERG |
BVACCEL
Kenny Rosenberg is VP of Design and
Development at Brand Value Accelerator,
the fastest growing Shopify Agency in
the world. BVAccel is strategically aligned
with the best platforms in the business
and laser focused on the 3 pillars of
eCommerce - conversion, retention
and acquisition.When BVAccel’s team
of diverse leaders work on a project
together, they focus on problem solving,
superb UX and scalability - the result is
beautiful online storefronts and steadfast,
lasting relationships.
DAVE HERMANSEN |
STORECOACH
Dave Hermansen is a world renowned
ecommerce expert who has received
national media attention for his unique
approach to building & marketing online
niche stores. Since 2003, he has built
dozens of 6-figure profit ecommerce
stores and has consulted on hundreds
of others. He is considered one of
the pioneers of dropship ecommerce
and currently coaches ecommerce
entrepreneurs at his online community,
StoreCoach.com.

4. RONEN AMIT |
SELLERACT
Ronen Amit is a senior eCommerce
strategist and the founder of SellerAct.
com, an eCommerce marketing
powerhouse focused on results. Ronen is
an award winning eCommerce marketer,
who has been helping companies to
succeed online since 1999 and an
eCommerce consultant for Mackenzie &
Company, AlphaSights among others.
DIANE ELLIS SCALISI |
CANIRANK
Diane Ellis Scalisi is an eCommerce
Strategist with CanIRank, an SEO tool
suite that helps ecommerce stores
improve their visibility online and attract
new customers. Previously, she ran a
$15M/yr eCommerce business in the
wedding and event decorations industry.
JAMES DILLON |
GORILLA 360
As Content Manager at ecommerce
marketing agency, Gorilla 360 - James
tells stories for a living. Sometimes they
are true. Always they are crafted to help
brands delight, educate and funny-bone-
tickle their audiences into coming back
for more. He’s super passionate (read:
obsessive) about ecommerce content
marketing, and dedicated to teaching
online retailers how to create their own
repeat-customer-generating machine.
Make sure you subscribe for a weekly
package of ecommerce learning from
James and the rest of the Gorilla 360
team.

5. AUTHOR: RICHARD LAZAZZERA | A BETTER LEMONADE STAND
ANSWER: Depending on your products, different link building strategies will work for
different businesses and niches. Outlined below is one of the most effective and popular
methods to get you started.
Create Remarkable Content
Without a doubt, this is one of the best ways to get dozens, hundreds, and maybe even
thousands of backlinks to your online store. Creating remarkable content means content
that’s so good, so interesting, and so comprehensive that people feel compelled to share
it with someone or with their social networks.
Even Neil Patel agrees:
“Create a site with high value information that elicits links by virtue of its
awesomeness. That, my friends, is content marketing.”
- Neil Patel
Wendy’s Lookbook is a popular fashion blog and online store. A while ago, Wendy
created an extremely comprehensive and entertaining YouTube video on 25 Ways to Tie a
Scarf (and I thought there were only 2 ways). This video alone has netted Wendy over 35
million views. Looking at SEMrush, we can also see she’s earned over 100 backlinks to
her blog because of it (I tend to find SEMrush under-reports backlinks as well). This video,
long after it was created, continues to get views, drive traffic, and earns Wendy ongoing
backlinks. Like the one in this article.
Take a look at the video below. How could you create a comprehensive video in your niche?
QUESTION:
It's hard to get people to link to my store. What are link
building strategies that work for ecommerce stores?

6. Keep in mind, it doesn’t have to be a polished video like Wendy’s. Even a comprehensive
blog post can earn you dozens of backlinks. That’s exactly what Emil from SnackNation,
a subscription snack delivery service, did.
On Emil’s first day of work, his boss sat him down and said: “get us some backlinks”.
To do that, Emil wrote a comprehensive post on employee wellness programs. After
reaching out by email to some people who he thought would be interested in his post,
he began getting a few backlinks which rose their position for the article in Google. This
in turn got their site more visibility, more sales, and more backlinks. A self perpetuating
cycle.
Read the full case study here.
Hundreds of Way to Get Backlinks
There are literally hundreds of ways to get backlinks to your store. If you’re looking for
some low-hanging fruit to get started, try sending out some products for reviews, ask
manufacturers and suppliers to link to you from their sites, write a guest blog post for
a popular blog, email your local newspaper about your business, and create relevant and
interesting conversations on Reddit (after a certain number of upvotes, Reddit links in
threads become DoFollow links from a very valuable 90+DA website).
For more ways to build backlinks to your store, check out Point Blank’s comprehensive
list of link building strategies.

7. Additional resources on link-building for ecommerce:
Brian Dean | Quicksprout: How to Build Links to Your Ecommerce Site [VIDEO]
Andrew Dennis | Linkarati: E-commerce Link Building Strategies
Shabbir Nooruddin | Bootstrapping Ecommerce: 50 Actionable Ways to Build Links to
Your eCommerce Store
Eric Ward | Search Engine Land: E-Commerce Link Building - The Challenge That Won't
Go Away
Stephanie Chang | MOZ: Creative Link Building for Ecommerce Sites
Pawel Grabowski | SERPS: Killer Ways to Build Links in Ecommerce

8. AUTHOR: KENNY ROSENBERG |
BVAACCEL
ANSWER: It’s a marketer’s dream to have built in SEO functionality; however, online store
owners need to carefully assess their site as well to develop a customized action plan in
order to enhance their search engine presence and traffic -- And with Shopify Plus, it’s
easy to do so. Here are a couple of SEO tips to help kickstart your category/collection
page in your eCommerce store.
Tips To Enhance SEO Category/Collection Page:
1. Ensure A Viable Ranking
At the bare minimum, your collection page content should include a title (set within
an h1 tag and consistent with anchor links used for navigation), introductory
description, and unique copy to ensure a top ranking within search results. Make sure
to keep it short and sweet, as we recommend using no more than 150-250 words.
2. Have A Strong Introductory Description
Your introductory description should be at least 2-3 sentences long and should
primarily communicate the types of products found in the collection as it’s important
to educate your customers through the entire shopping process. The introductory
description can also include value propositions or promotional messaging to further
engage your shoppers (you may place this above your product list).
3. Add Details About Products
Near the bottom of your collection pages (below the product list), you should add
unique and descriptive details about the products within the collection. Remember to
QUESTION:
How much copy should you have on a category/
collection page in your ecommerce store? What should it
be about? (Where should you put it?)

9. use several words people are most likely to search for.
4. Include Primary Keywords
You will want to include primary keywords (only once) within this content block and
any other copy that may have been used in your Meta Titles or Descriptions (Shopify
themes can automatically generate meta descriptions for each page). This unique copy
is placed below your product list so it doesn’t impact conversions by pushing products
below the fold.
WANT TO WORK WITH
BVA ACCEL?
At BVAccel we believe that that every portion
of an eCommerce strategy is important. From
building your webstore to acquiring customers
through marketing strategies.
CONTACT USVIEW PORTFOLIO
Additional Resources on SEO for Category Pages:
Simon Habtemariam | Groove: Four SEO Tips for eCommerce Category Pages
Linda Bustos | GetElastic: 3 Ninja Ways to Boost Your Category Page SEO
Everett Sizemore | Volusion: How to Increase SEO by Adding Content on Category Pages
FuturePay: How to Optimize Your Product Category Pages

10. AUTHOR: DAVE HERMANSEN | STORECOACH
ANSWER: One of the biggest problems that eCommerce store owners face is writing
unique, compelling content for their product pages - especially if they have hundreds or
even thousands of products. What compounds the problem is that when a great number
of products are very similar, you run the risk of repeating virtually the same content on
every single product page and creating a great deal of on-site duplicate content.
Although it certainly helps to have a lot of relevant content on a page, writing long form
1,000+ word product descriptions is nearly impossible for most product niches and
frankly, it is rarely necessary. More important, is providing the type of content that informs
customers, answering questions they may have and helping them see how the product
can make their life better.
We tackle product pages with a two-pronged approach. First we want to get our
websites up and running as quickly as possible and not get bogged down for months,
writing hundreds of ultra unique product pages. After our site is launched and we have
begun marketing it, we will go back into our product pages, one by one, and re-write
them, adding additional information.
During the pre-launch stage, we typically write several sentences of unique content,
attempting to create a why reason for buying any given product. The key here is to put
yourself in a customer's shoes and create a mental image of how that product will make
them better, smarter, more likable, more popular, more attractive, happier, etc. After that,
we will include the typical manufacturer bullet point features but we try re-write them
slightly to make them a little more unique. We will also include what we call templated
copy that is essentially the same on every product page but with the product name
inserted within the copy. This templated copy will include why buy from us? information
like our satisfaction guarantee, free shipping (if applicable) and warranty information.
QUESTION:
It's not feasible to have 1,000 word descriptions of
each of my products. How long should my product
descriptions really be?

11. Templated copy might look something like this:
You can rest assured that you are making an excellent decision when you buy our
Acme Roadrunner Repellent. It is backed by our 30 Day Satisfaction Guarantee
as well as a One Year Manufacturer's Warranty. Better still, all Acme Roadrunner
Repellent orders SHIP FREE! If you have any questions about whether this proven
roadrunner repellent will work for your particular situation, please don't hesitate
to get in touch with us via our Contact Us form or give us a call, toll free, at 1-800-
555-1234. We love helping people get the exact product for their needs!
After the store is launched and we are working on getting backlinks and, perhaps, running
ads for the website, we go back in and add additional content to our product pages. This
is where we take a look at the manufacturer's bullet point features and write sentences
that explain the benefits of those features. We also make sure that every who, what,
where, when, why and how question that we can think of has been answered. If we
have access to assembly instructions or owners manuals, we'll add those in a tab on the
product page, too.
I assure you that after you have done all of that, your product pages will be vastly superior
to what the majority of your competitors are doing and you'll have far more content than
you ever thought you could create for each product. Over time, customers will hopefully
be supplying even more content to your product pages in the form of reviews or even
testimonials. If you are working with shopping cart software that has a product-specific
FAQs module, that will add a great deal of additional, super relevant copy to your product
pages, as well.
While it is true that the more content there is on a page, the better chance it has at
ranking well, the most important thing with product pages is converting visitors into
buyers. We always think of the customer first and the search engines second. Fortunately,
if you follow our method of creating product pages, you'll get positive results from both!
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AN ECOMMERCE STORE
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and market an online store
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12. Additional Resources on Copywriting for Product Pages:
Laura Serino | eCommerceFuel: Boring Products? No Problem. How to Write Compelling
Copy for Anything.
Pulkit Rastogi | I Love Fashion Retail: Fashion Copywriting: 13 Tips for Writing Product
Descriptions That Will Get Your Customers to Say Yes
Mark Macdonald | Shopify: 9 Simple Ways to Write Product Descriptions that Sell
Craig Anderson | Smashing Magazine: E-Commerce Copywriting: The Guide to
Selling More
Khalid Saleh | MOZ: 4 Ways Copywriting Can Help Your Ecommerce Conversion Rates

13. AUTHOR: RONEN AMIT | SELLER ACT
ANSWER:
The Options for Approaching Product Variants
Product variants --the different variations in color, size, scent and so on --of a certain
product, can be incorporated into your online store in two ways:
1. Single product page, enabling your customers to choose the right size, preferred color, scent, etc.
2. Multiple product pages, each page for each variants or for a group of variants
Which is better for SEO, and what other factors may you want to take into account?
Single Product Page
Creating a single page for all product variants is pretty straightforward on most modern
ecommerce platforms. If you decide to go with a single page, make sure to apply SEO
best practices, as you would on any content page, integrating keywords into the product
title and description, meta tags, and so on.
Important Note: If your platform creates a new URL for each variant, make sure you use
canonical URL to signal Google that all variant URLs are pointing to a single core product.
Otherwise, you risk Google considering these URLs as duplicates and penalizing your
product pages, or even your whole website. Use the following tag on your product page,
between head and /head:
link rel=canonical href=your core product url here /
QUESTION:
What are SEO best practices for handling dozens of
variations of the same product?

14. The Canonical URL signals the search engine your preferred core product URL
For further information, see: https://support.google.com/webmasters/
answer/139066
In addition, you may want to consider using Schema.org. Here is an example how to deal
with variants:
div itemprop=model itemscope itemtype=http://schema.org/ProductModel
span itemprop=nameVariant Product Name/span
meta itemprop=productID content=Variant Product SKU or Catalog # /
meta itemprop=isVariantOf content=Core Product SKU or Catalog # /
/div
/div
For further information please refer to http://schema.org/ProductModel
Multiple Product Pages
In case you decide to create different page for each variant (see more considerations and
recommendations below), you will need to set the content of each variant page apart,
so Google's algorithm will not consider those pages as duplicates. Unless you have only
several core products, this could be a tedious task. For example, if you have only 5 colors
and 5 sizes for each core product, 100 products turns into 2500 product pages, each
should be optimized separately with a unique content.
Usability and conversion
Beyond SEO, there are many factors --and chief among these, usability and conversion
Variant 1 Variant 2 - Note the URL is different
than variant

15. -- to consider when you’re working with an eCommerce site. Even if you were able to
generate more organic traffic by creating different pages for each product variant rather
than featuring all variants on a single page, does that mean you are making more sales?
If a potential customer were to find your store and see the blue product, would she be
aware that you also have the same product in red?
When a customer arrives at your web store, regardless of whether they came through a
search engine, how easy is it for them to find the product they are interested in? Having
25x more product pages, or even just 5x more product pages, for each core product
may possibly help you generate more organic traffic, but at the same time it will almost
certainly make it more difficult for your customers to find products in your store. Is the
tradeoff worth it?
Best Practice
It is very clear that Google does not like duplicate pages. And if you try to find loopholes
in Google's algorithm, you risk facing massive penalties for your entire web store.
We recommend creating a single page with all your variants in one place. For best results,
apply on-page SEO to create an optimized product page, which ranks well on search
engines and converts your visitors into buyers, with attractive design, hi-res images,
persuasive content and clear a call-to-action.
BUILD AN ONLINE
STORE
Learn about how Ronen Amit and SellerAct
can help you build an online store that creates
revenue and growth.
START BUILDING

16. Additional Resources on Product Variants:
Katey Ferenzi | BigCommerce: Product Options: The Most Commonly Overlooked
Ecommerce Element Likely Affecting Your SEO and Conversions
Jill Kocher | Practical Ecommerce: SEO: When Product Facets and Filters Fail
Google Webmaster | Faceted Navigation Best (and 5 of the Worst) Practices

17. QUESTION:
What does SEO friendly ecommerce site architecture
look like?
AUTHOR: JAMES DILLON | GORILLA 360
ANSWER: When we SEO folk talk architecture, we’re referring to the way your content
is organized on your website. Site architecture matters to search engines, especially for
ecommerce websites.
If you have a ‘deep’ architecture it takes your customers a bunch of clicks to find their
information. Google, Bing and friends are no different. Search engines find it hard to
navigate through different levels of your website. So in the simple terms that you wished
your business teacher could have used to save you an entire semester worth of study:
The easier it is for search engines to find your content, the better your
presence in SERPs will be.
The difference between deep and flat site architecture
On the left is a flat architecture, with a homepage, 8 category pages and 6 product pages
within each category.
On the right is a deep architecture, with a homepage, four category pages, two layers of
sub category pages and just one or two product pages within each sub category.
A “flat architecture” is best for SEO purposes. But as always, customer first, Google
second.

18. Why a flat site architecture is (usually) better
A flat page hierarchy allows users to navigate through your site quickly, with no
need to make 6 or 7 clicks to get to their destination. So most times flat is best for your
customers too. However, if your potential customer can’t understand where to find
information within a category, you might need to add a sub category to make things
easier.
If it’s fashion apparel you’re pedaling, you could break out men’s and women’s shoes into
categories, rather than forcing your visitors to search through both on the same product
page.
From an SEO point of view, a flat structure ensures your page rank is less diluted
across the site. Pages will get more rankings juice from each other.
The more clicks you have to get to the lower pages, the more link juice (technical term,
promise…) you are filtering. This means less juice is left for your 'deeper pages' and that
Google will have a harder time finding them.
If a customer needs fewer clicks to get to the bottom of your architecture, it’s easier for
Google to associate your popular home and category pages with your product pages.
Google doesn’t have to search as hard or squeeze the rankings juice as far.
This is particularly important for e-commerce sites as you are dealing with lots and lots of
categories, sub-categories and products pages.

19. SEO friendly ecommerce site architecture
In a basic sense, this structure is an ideal setup for an SEO friendly ecommerce site.
• Your products are only 2 clicks away from the homepage
• All of your pages are easy for robots to crawl and navigate
• Most importantly, it’s easy and fast for potential customers to find the information they
are searching for
Of course e-commerce sites can be very complex, but if you’re following a similar pattern
to this you’ve got the right foundations for a flat site architecture.
YOU DON'T NEED TO
PAY AN EXPERT.
Need help improving your ecommerce site's
SEO? With this guide you can do it yourself.
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20. Additional Resources on Ecommerce Site Architecture:
James Gurd | Econsultancy: Ecommerce Information Architecture: the Devil in the Detail
Jill Kocher | PracticalEcommerce: SEO 201: Architecture is Key
Ecommerce SEO Book: Ecommerce Website Architecture and SEO, Part 1; Part 2

21. AUTHOR: DIANE ELLIS SCALISI |
CANIRANK
ANSWER: On-page SEO consists of a lot of things you have direct control over including
high quality, thematic content, page titles, header tags, image alt tags, URL structure,
page load times, and your overall site architecture.
Off-page SEO, on the other hand, is made up of the signals that tell Google what others
think about your ecommerce store. And in order for others to think anything - good or
bad - about your store, you need to engage in the promotion and marketing of your site.
Off-page SEO falls into four broad categories: page external relevancy; website external
relevancy; page strength; and website strength.
1. Page external relevancy
Do others consider your website’s product pages, collection pages, and blog posts
relevant? A high page external relevancy score means that many quality websites link
to a specific page in your store using anchor text related to the keyword.
In the screenshot below, for example, the blogger links to Ikea’s homepage with the
anchor text “Ikea Houston.” However, if Ikea were trying to improve its off-page SEO
for lawn furniture specifically, they could increase their page external relevancy scores
by asking the blogger to link to their lawn furniture category page using the anchor text
“lawn furniture”.
QUESTION:
What is off page SEO? Is it important for an ecommerce
store?

22. 2. Website External Relevancy
Do others consider your ecommerce store relevant? A high Website External
Relevancy score means that other websites frequently link to your website using
anchor text related to the keyword.
In that last example, imagine the blogger had instead linked to Ikea’s homepage from
the anchor text “lawn furniture and striped umbrellas”. Google would see that as this
blogger’s vote or recommendation of Ikea as a place to get lawn furniture and striped
umbrellas. Enough bloggers and websites associating Ikea again and again with lawn
furniture and striped umbrellas would translate into high website external relevancy
scores for those keywords.
3. Page Strength
How authoritative is a specific product page, category page, or blog post in your
store? Search engines consider a page to be important when many other important
pages link to it.
Page strength scores are a combination of on-page and off-page SEO. The best place
to start building page strength scores for individual pages in your store is by linking to
them from other important pages in your website.

23. If you’re working on a relatively new store, focus on getting links to your homepage. Links
from bloggers, directories, forums, review sites, vendors, manufacturers, and experts or
professionals in your niche listing you as a source for your primary keyword help build
your homepage’s page strength. You can share some of that strength with your category/
collection and product pages if you link to them directly from the homepage.
Over time, as your homepage page strength grows, you can shift your focus to building
the page strength of category/collection pages as well as core product pages. Of course,
as the store owner or administrator, your control over the link building process is limited.
But you can reach out to websites who link to your store to thank them and to ask them to
consider updating their link to your homepage to a category or product page.
Going back to the Ikea example, assuming that Ikea already has a great page strength
score for their homepage, it could be worthwhile for them to ask the blogger to link to their
lawn furniture collection instead of (or even better, in addition to) their homepage.
4. Website Strength
How authoritative is your estore as a whole? Much like page strength, a high website
strength score means that many other important pages are linking to your site -
including the homepage and all other pages.
Having a high website strength score means that new pages that you add to your store will
have a much easier time of ranking, even with lower scores relative to your competitors
in other key measures. This is why your long established competitors and ecommerce
giants can rank with pretty weak pages with limited copy and irrelevant content.

24. The screenshot above from the CanIRank Improve My Rankings tool examines the on-
page and off-page SEO scores for ecommerce store Small Pet Select’s landing page for
timothy hay (food for rabbits and guinea pigs). The analysis gives us an understanding of
what Small Pet Select needs to do to move from 9th in the rankings for “timothy hay” to a
top search result. As we can see, Small Pet Select’s Page Relevancy score of 81 crushes
the competitions’ scores, and its website relevancy score is better than four of the top
rankers. However, Amazon, Wikipedia, and PetSmart have website strength scores that
far exceed Small Pet Select’s. While it may not be feasible to overtake these giants in
the short term, Small Pet Select can work on building its website relevancy score (on-
page SEO) and site external relevancy score (off-page SEO) to overtake Sierra Valley Hay,
which currently holds the fifth and sixth ranked pages in the search results.
Understanding off-page SEO is the first step in being able to craft a strategy that will get
your store ranking. To learn more about off-page SEO tactics that you can use to increase
your scores, take a look at the following resources:
• 5 Off-Page SEO Tactics from a DIY Merchant
• Building Backlinks: The Backbone of Your Ecommerce Business
• How 9 Ecommerce Stores Use Content Marketing to Build Links
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LOVE YOUR STORE.
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suite as a full-service option.
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25. Quality blogs and online magazines about digital marketing and SEO are plentiful. But
marketing and SEO tactics that work for other types of websites don’t always translate
well to ecommerce applications. The following list contains the ten best ecommerce blogs
for online merchants.
1. Practical Ecommerce
When you have any ecommerce-specific SEO question, or are merely looking for new,
actionable ideas to test out to increase your store’s traffic and conversions, there’s
really no place better than Practical Ecommerce. The site features a regular roster
of authors with deep ecommerce experience writing on such topics as marketing,
conversion, carts and platforms, social media, search engines, and estore design and
development. Additionally, Practical Ecommerce boasts regular columns by current
ecommerce merchants who regularly share lessons they’ve learned from their
experiences running online stores.
2. The Shopify Ecommerce Blog
Shopify is a content machine, producing regular podcasts, case studies, and blog
posts on just about every aspect of ecommerce you can imagine. They also offer
some impressively comprehensive guides on various challenges that ecommerce store
owners face, such as how to use Google Shopping as a source of traffic and how
to run a successful dropshipping business. Even if you don’t host your store on
Shopify’s platform, you’ll find much of the content on their blog and in their guides to
be universally applicable.
3. A Better Lemonade Stand
Less about theory, more about how to master the everyday things you need to be
able to do in order to run a successful ecommerce store, Richard Lazazzera’s A
Better Lemonade Stand is one of the best resources out there for solopreneurs
and ecommerce startups. On the ABLS blog, you’ll find scores of really valuable
resources that Richard gives away for free including a guide that details how to find
drop shipping companies and suppliers, and which comes with a directory of 50
suppliers.
TOP 10 ECOMMERCE BLOGS

26. 4. Ecommerce Illustrated
Some bloggers set out to produce fresh high-quality content on a weekly basis, and
realize the the near-impossibility of this ambition after three or four weeks. Not so with
Linda Bustos, the blogger behind the stellar blog Ecommerce Illustrated, which
walks you through 52 ecommerce “issues” from an estore’s home page through the
checkout with a new blog post each week. Each post is chock-full of data, loads of
examples (with screenshots), and lots of actionable advice.
5. Gorilla360
The folks at Sydney-based Gorilla360 really know their ecommerce. And they write
about topics such as SEO, conversion optimization, and customer loyalty in a quirky,
offbeat, accessible way that will have you coming back for more.
6. Baymard Institute
The Copenhagen-based Baymard Institute really deserves a spot in any ecommerce
professional’s regular reading circuit. Focusing on topics such as ecommerce search,
homepage and navigation best practices, checkout experience, and ecommerce on
mobile devices, the Baymard Institute conducts original, large-scale research studies
on ecommerce usability. They offer their comprehensive studies (which number in the
100s of pages) for purchase, but their blog is full of fascinating excerpts from these
studies.
7. SelfStartr
Though updates to the SelfStartr blog are somewhat infrequent, the thoroughness
of research that goes into founder Darren DeMatas’s posts is awe inspiring. Take his
guide on selecting the best ecommerce platform, or his post on why ecommerce
stores can’t rely on the Google Keyword Planner for their keyword research,
for example. Plus, if you prefer learning via podcast, be sure to check out Darren’s
podcast series on ecommerce topics.
8. eCommerceFuel
eCommerceFuel is an online (and real-life) community for owners and in-house
employees of ecommerce stores generating six and seven figure revenue. But in
addition to their exclusive community, eCommerceFuel founder Andrew Youderian
hosts a regular podcast and maintains a blog about successfully navigating all
things ecommerce.
9. Web Retailer
Web Retailer has carved out a niche for itself by focusing entirely on marketplace
ecommerce. So if you’re running a multichannel ecommerce business, or interested in

27. selling on marketplaces such as Amazon, Ebay, Rakuten, and the like, Web Retailer is
an unparalleled resource.
10. E-Commerce Nation
A relative newcomer, E-Commerce Nation approaches ecommerce topics with a
dose of international flair. With its steady stream of content, E-Commerce Nation is
a great site to peruse on your lunch break where you’ll come across articles on such
questions as how to use color psychology in E-Commerce and how to add
some life to your E-Commerce AdWords campaign in under 10 minutes.