I found a question like this in the forums recently, and noticed there have been a number of people asking it. The question asked is “How do I change / customize the META tag description for my Zen Cart home page?
In case you aren’t aware of it, the “default” META description for the home page of your Zen Cart store basically lists the “title” you have given to your site, and then follows that with a list of all the keywords you have entered in your language file. So, what you end up with is something that looks like this:
My Store Name – keyword1, keyword2, keyword3, keyword4, keyword5, etc…
Not very “nice” looking is it? Well, as with all things “conversion” related, the “conversion” process starts from the minute a potential customer views any information about you.
Why is that important?
Well, if you want to increase conversion, you need “qualified visitors”. Qualified visitors come from various sources, one being Organic Search results.If it were “paid search” (PPC) ads we were running, would we pay money for our ad to say something this? I don’t think so (unless you had money to waste and really didn’t care about increasing sales).
So then, why should we settle for our “Organic Search Ad” (because in reality, that IS what you should think of your search listing as) to say it? Well, the answer is we shouldn’t!
Let me put it this way. If you were searching for “cell phones” on the the Internet, and you came across a number of search listings that looked like this (I’ll show just 2 entries as an example):
Cellular Phone Central – We have the best prices on cell phones from LG, Motorola, Samsung and more. Free shipping and calling plans for all orders.
My Cell Phone Store – cell phones, cellular plans, lg, motorola, samsung, phones, calling cards, wireless, verizon
Which would “prompt you” more to click it? The vast majority of Internet users would click the first one as it is more descriptive in nature and tells at least a bit more about what they can expect when they get to the site. It also gives them reason to click by stating a few direct customer focused benefits (very important if you want qualified traffic).
How do you change it?
So having stated that, the question of “how to change your home page META description in Zen Cart” becomes much more important! How you change it as follows:
Copy the file:
/includes/modules/meta_tags.phpto your templates and overrides directory:
/includes/modules/your_template_dir/meta_tags.phpFind this code:
// Get different meta tag values depending on main_page values
switch ($_GET['main_page']) {
case 'advanced_search':
And change to this:
// Get different meta tag values depending on main_page values
switch ($_GET['main_page']) {
case ($this_is_home_page == true):
define('META_TAG_TITLE', 'MY HOME PAGE');
define('META_TAG_DESCRIPTION', 'This meta tag is showing on my immediate home page to my site');
define('META_TAG_KEYWORDS', 'keywords each go here');
break;
case 'advanced_search':
Then edit it to read as you want the tags to read for the Home page.
Thanks to Linda over at the Zen forums for answering this one for everybody.