I’ve played around in a fair few eCommerce “solutions” too, including X-Cart, Zen Cart, Cube Cart, Ubercart, Magento and more. But nothing really “solved” my problems. They were either too complicated, too painful or too expensive. And anyway, I love WordPress.

But regardless, if you’d said to me 4 weeks ago … “I need a eCommerce website built on a brand new domain, using WordPress, and I need it to rank number 1 on Google for my primary keywords within a month”, I’d say … “you’re a fool” and “do you have many THOUSANDS of dollars”..?

But who’s the fool now..? Enter www.aromata.com.au.

I’ve been building this website for a new online business, and I decided to use it as my own testing ground to combine some SEO techniques with some WordPress techniques with some custom coding techniques. The results, while making me look good, also makes me look stupid, because Aromata Online Shopping is already ranking number 1 on Google Australia for nearly every primary keyword (where Google have indexed the appropriate URL), and I said this was neigh impossible.

Let’s put this into perspective – this website that I’ve hand delivered to Aromata (which I now know is worth 10 times what I charged) has all the the following features …

• eCommerce (including a fancy ajax shopping cart)
• CMS (Content Management System)
• (obviously effective) SEO
• advanced security features
• no ongoing, expensive “website upate fees”

And that’s really only the beginning. I could list on and on about the pretty URLs, PayPal integration, Google sitemap, Google Analytics and Webmaster integration, but that list would never end. And this article is more about the result than the methods use to get there.

So … just how many number 1 Google rankings does this brand new website have..? Well considering that there’s only 20 products instore at the moment (the site’s not yet finished, and the cart not yet fully stocked), and I only cross-checked for 10 keywords, this list has an impressive strike rate.

1. handsaw keyring
2. hacksaw keyring
3. chakra locket
4. car diffuser refill
5. pliers keyring
6. cam keyring
7. throat locket
8. crown locket
9. drill keyring
10. saw keyring

    * (these 10 keywords are all ranking #1 on Google Australia as I write this review. We all know that Google rankings change with the breeze, so this won’t be the case for ever. We all also know that SEO is not a one off operation – so if you’re reading this Aromata, you have an incredible head start, so don’t deny your website the regular love it so rightly deserves).

This Google eCommerce WordPress success story would simply NOT BE POSSIBLE without the SIGNIFICANT contributions made by folk way smarter than me:

• WordPress eCommerce Theme: Market Theme – US$55
• WordPress SEO Advice: Joost de Valk – FREE
• WordPress SEO PlugIn: Semper Fi Web Design – FREE

nb. No doubt some SEO/WordPress Gurus will question/debate/refute points in this article. But hey, Aromata are happy, and why woudn’t they be. By using simple, sound & ethical website building practices, they’re laughing all the way Position #1. And is there any greater position for an eCommerce website than to be ranking #1 in Google for an exact match on your product keywords..?

It lives inside your WordPress dashboard and it gives you instant access to live website statistics like traffic volumes, keyword/search terms, referring websites, browser & operating systems, search spider visits and lots more.

And best of all, it also allows you to “spy” on your own website traffic. At any time you can see exactly who is accessing your site, where they’re from, their IP address, which pages they are viewing, what search term and engine brought them to you, PLUS what operating system and browser they are using. Google Analytics eat your heart out..!

And the biggest advantage to this type of analytics tool is there are no coding requirements. Google Analytics is arguably the best free tools for thorough, detailed website analysis. But you do need some coding skills/access, and sometimes it just “feels” like a laborious tool to use.

StatPress is exactly the opposite; it’s effortless to use and painless to access. Installation is a breeze, and since installing it I’ve been checking my basic traffic trends here more than inside Google’s analytics tool. Admittedly, it is not the fully-featured tool that is gAnalytics, but that does not matter. This plugin rocks..!

It’s instant, live data that you can analyze, search and export easily. It doesn’t replace gAnalytics, but it’s a faster, easier way to quickly check your stats.

This is how detailed StatPress really is. The Dashboard, which is a basic overview of all the stats, shows you ALL the following:

Overview : a total report on visitor, pageview, spider and RSS feed stats. Displays volume by total, this month, last month, today and yesterday.

Hits : reports your last 10 site hits. Breaks them down to time, IP address, TLD, page hit, operating system and browser used.

Keywords/Search terms : reports the last 10 search queries that brought traffic to your site. Includes date, time, keyword, search engine and search engine results page.

Referrers : shows you the last 10 URLs that sent traffic to your site, and what time and date that occurred.

Agents : the 10 latest Agents

Pages : what day, time, page and OS/Browser combo were last viewed.

Spiders : what day, time, Spider and Agent last crawled your site.

And that’s just the Overview…! This really is a must-have WordPress PlugIn. And with the recent crash and burn of alternate analytic providers, I’d be careful who you use to track your traffic. Between StatPress and gAnalytics there’s not much you can’t achieve.

Here’s the link to StatPress plugin on WordPress.org and the StatPress Homepage.

It can be a really time-consuming to set up these type of tools just to test them out, so if you wanna save yourself a heap of time, here’s what we’ve found.

*This is an ever-growing list of benefits. As we continue to use both tools, we’ll keep adding the advantages

Why iContact is better than AWeber:

• it’s twice as cheap
  the cheapest plan costs only $10 per month (v’s AWeber’s $19 per month)
• there are twice as many plans available
  iContact offer 11 different plans to suit your needs. AWeber offer only 5 plans.
• you can save even more money with discounts for annual subscriptions
  iContact offer up to 10% discounts if you take up an annual subscription. AWeber offer only monthly plans only.
• it’s a simpler solution
  iContact is easier to use. It’s a better option for smaller blogs and website who don’t have massive email lists.
• their free trial is really a free trial
  you can use the service free of charge for 15 days. AWeber only offer a “risk-free” trial (this means if you’re not happy at the end of 30 days you get a refund).

Why AWeber is better than iContact

• their trial is twice as long
  AWeber risk-free trial is 30 days. iContact free trial is 15 days.
• you can split test emails
  this is a massive advantage to AWeber (but is it worth the extra cost..?)
• they now have a subscriber count chicklet
  you can publically display how many subscribers you have

I’m pretty much using it exclusively for every web site I build. Why..? Because it works, and it works VERY well.