SEO Friendly URLs 403 Access Error

For those of you using — or thinking of using — any form of SEO URLs mod to rewrite the links on your site you may want to be aware of this common error message many have reported getting.

I’ve run into this myself on a few servers and it made no sense to me as to why I would get it when in other cases the rewriting of URLs worked just fine.

The error more specifically states “403 Access Forbidden” and goes on to provide very little detail. There are a number of reasons this can happen some stemming from incorrect configuration of the .htaccess file itself (used to setup the rules and conditions for rewriting.)

If you are sure the .htaccess file is correct and are still getting the error, then go back and first enter ONLY the following in the .htaccess file itself:

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^yourdomain.(.*)
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.yourdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

Replace “yourdomain” with the domain of your site (and don’t forget the “.com” extension. Use the extension your site has.)

Now open up the following url in your browser:
http://yourdomain.com (again replacing “yourdomain” with your own personal domain.)

If the server is setup correctly (php configured with mod_rewrite and that is loaded) then you should see the home page of your website BUT in the address bar of the browser you should see the “www” form of it.

You entered “yourdomain.com” and you should see “www.yourdomain.com”.

If this works, then your server is setup correctly and the problem likely resides in either the configuration of your .htaccess file OR as I found, the root directory permissions of your website.

How to Correct the Error

Make sure your root directory is set to something that allows “write” access (like 755 or something). Keeping your sever as secure as possible yet allowing it to “write”. You can change these permissions by using your FTP program to login to your server and then performing a CHMOD command on the root directory (of the site that is.)

Change the root to 755 and then reload your page going through the same steps as above.

If all is working, then your SEO URLs module should also be working now.

Hope this helps anyone banging their head around looking for an answer to why they can’t get SEO Friendly URLs to work on their server.

Live Chat’s Effect on ROI

It’s been reported for some time now that adding an attended (as opposed to always “offline”) live chat to a website can help increase sales.

Live chat address many buyer needs from customer assurance elements (they understand that there is actually a real person behind the site) to instant help ability which can answer questions and save a sale that would have otherwise been lost.

Forrester Consulting just released a new study on the benefits of adopting an interactive chat strategy.

The report specifically discussed the use of Live Person as the system of choice, but there is a great open source free option as well called Crafty Syntax which works equally well if you have the skills to get it in place.

If you want to read the whole study, the full report can be downloaded for free from here.

Some key findings presented in the study include:

• 305% ROI from proactive sales chat with a payback period of 6 months (when using paid chat services)
• 120% ROI from customer service chat with a payback period of 6 months (when using paid chat services)
• Chat assisted application completion rates 138% higher than self service
• 59% call deflection rate

So if you haven’t already implemented a live chat solution on your website it might be time to consider that as an option. Just make sure if you do decide to put a chat strategy in place you actually use it. Keep someone behind the “desk” and keep the chat “online”. It does you no good to implement a live chat solution that is always offline.

If you’ve tried live chat on your site and can measure its effectiveness let me know what effect it had. It’s always nice to hear one way or the other real world examples from store owner experiences.

Social Media Links

Social media is taking on a larger role for businesses by enabling them to bring more awareness to their product, company and or service.

If you are not utilizing some sort of social media (blogging, social network sites, etc..) in your marketing plan, it’s time to start thinking about it.

In previous posts I’ve mentioned this concept. Links to some off those previous posts are below:
Social Networking Sites Offer Free Marketing Channel

For those of you who do not know where to begin finding a channel that fits your market among the many social networks, I’ve provided a link for you below that may help get you started in your research.

Wikipedia’s List of Social Networking Sites

Designing for Your Audience

Over the past year or more I’ve listed a number of strategies that aim to help ecommerce store owners increase their website sales.

A portion of them involve changes to website design including proper placement of elements on the page.

In keeping with my previous post, I see a number of store owners implementing these strategies in the hopes of increasing conversion immediately yet they completely ignore the rest of their design. They end up wondering why the “changes” had little effect.

What do I mean?

Well, unless you design your website with your target market in mind, and have done your homework to find out the best plan of action on capturing that market, then simply adding a few elements in certain locations on a page won’t have the impact you hope for. If the rest of your website design misses the mark it will limit the results that can be achieved.

Sure, the changes in most cases should have a positive impact to some degree … or I wouldn’t mention them. But to really see a big impact, you have to also make sure your site is designed with your customer in mind.

A site designed in a “modern technical” style with the elements placed in proper locations when your market is antiques probably won’t have the most effective impact on sales. To get it right, the design should be custom. Taylor made to your specific business objectives and target market. It should be designed in response to answers received from very specific questions relating to both your business and your target.

Remember, conversion is a process not an event. Although making a few changes might help in the sort term, to sustain long term success you must continually test and refine your strategies. You must know your market and speak to them in a manner which persuades action. This includes through the graphics you use as part of your design.

The graphics, alignment, and color scheme help set the mood and tone of the website. If they don’t fit what market you are targeting then the results — although present — will be less than what you hoped for.

Keep that in mind the next time you are looking for a website design or website redesign hoping to increase sales. To get the design right, it must answer a series of questions that directly relate to your business, target market and demographic user otherwise it’s just a “design”.

Keeping Customers in the Checkout Process

Moving customers through the checkout process effectively is a critical element toward closing any sale.

Throughout this process you will need to continually provide them with the necessary elements which ensure they feel comfortable enough to complete the action (i.e. buy your product.)

Checkout abandonment is a problem that all ecommerce sites see in some degree. The rate at which your visitors abandon depends on how effective you have structured the process. Once you get them started on it they may leave, but you don’t have to make it easy on them to do so. Some site owners are doing just that.

The Problem Revealed

There is an inherent problem I have seen on a number of ecommerce sites who’s owners attempt to provide their customers with the “right information” at the “right time” with the hopes of persuading them to complete the checkout. These sites oftentimes do a good job of placing the elements but fail in one other important area — how they present the information the element leads to.

The way this information is presented can either help or negate to some degree the intended effect. In the examples I have seen, the sites present the user with a hyperlink element linking them to a point of customer assurance which resides on a new page within the site. This can be a link to the shipping rate schedule, a guarantee, contact information, or more.

However, the way these sites have implemented the elements actually ends up taking the visitor further away from the checkout process — not what you want if you are trying to close a sale and win over a customer.

Implementation

For the past several months I’ve been testing the two methods against each other. One method uses hyperlink elements that “feed” customer assurance information to the visitor via a link to a new page, and the other feeds customer assurance information via a non-blockable DHTML hover box. The results were not surprising.

The method which utilized the DHTML hover over boxes had a positive increase on the website conversion in the areas it was utilized. In contrast, in instances where the information was fed to the user via links to other pages on the site (taking them away from the checkout process), the abandonment rates were higher and the conversion lower.

When asked, users attributed their abandonment to confusion relating to “how to get back into the checkout process” at the exact point they were at when they left it to view the “assurance” information.

Below are two screenshots. Figure 1 shows the typical way I saw this method utilized on sites; with hyperlinks that took the user out to other pages in order to get the information they sought. Figure 2 shows the after effect using the more effective DHTML hover over box which gives the end user what they seek without taking them away from the checkout process.

Figure 1

Figure 2

Others have tried to circumvent the misfortune of leading users away from the checkout process by providing the information in a traditional “pop-up” window. Not a bad idea, but still not the best. Why? Because with the many pop-up blockers built into browsers now, these clicks may only frustrate them again.

The answer is to provide the information to them in a non-blockable DHTML hover over type window. You can even set these up to activate “on mouse over” if you wish which will present the information simply by hovering a mouse over the link.

You’ve now got yet one more tool to use in your quest for increased conversion. Use it wisely and you will be rewarded.

To your continued success.