Tag Archives: WordPress and Zen Cart integration

Embedded Blogs | A WordPress & Zen Cart Integration Review

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Your Blog IS NOT an Island
(AKA Your Blog is Not a Step-Child)
(AKA Embedded Blogs: Wrong Solution for the Wrong Problem)

I’ve written before about why I believe that embedded blogs are the wrong solution for the wrong problem.. So let’s look at some of the most common supporting statements used by those firmly in the “embedded blogs” camp.

As most folks know, WordPress has long been touted for providing siteowners with a means to EASILY add keyword rich content, which as we know is good for SEO, conversion rates and increasing search engine rankings. However, there are still those who would tout the virtues of implementing “embedded blog” solutions by stating (erroneously) that having a “separate blog” is a BAD thing that you want to avoid at all costs. Here’s some of the most commonly used supporting statements for endorsing a blog embedded inside Zen Cart:

  1. Customers can navigate seamlessly between your store and your blog
  2. Embedding means not having your blog in a separate location
    (saaaaaaaayyy.. doesn’t that KINDA contradict the previous statement??)
  3. Customers are taken away from your Zen Cart site when they click through to your blog
  4. You do not need to create a separate WordPress theme
    (one of my favorites “mis-statements”… more later on this..)
  5. Enjoy all the functionality of WordPress
    (hmmmmmmm.. ALL of it.. really??? even ALL plugins??)
  6. Shopping cart totals and checkout links will show on your site pages including the blog.

These statements on their face are ALL only partially true. Surely they do not tell the WHOLE WordPress and Zen Cart integration story. Truly some of this train of though comes from not letting go of old beliefs. Namely that there is only ONE WAY to skin the WordPress Zen Cart integration cat. (HA!)

Regarding items 1-3:

If your blog and store are in the SAME domain, regardless as to whether Zen Cart is in a subfolder of your WordPress site (http://yoursite.com & http://yoursite.com/shop) or WordPress is in a subfolder of your Zen Cart site http://yoursite.com & http://yoursite.com/blog) your customers are NOT “taken away” from your site when they click through to your blog or store. Your WordPress blog and Zen Cart store are a part of the OVERALL landscape that makes up your site. These elements of your site are not some separate island to be treated like some red-headed step child..

From the customer POV, clicking a link to an article or clicking a link to a product page is all part of the same activity involved with browsing your website as they all reside in the same domain. Trust me they are not saying as they browse your site “Uh oh.. I am in WordPress land now..” or “I am traveling to the land of Zen Cart..”

However, if you do not have LOTS of visual cues to guide your customers when they transition from (lets say) a product page to a blog article, the chances of customers losing interest in or forgetting about making a purchase in the shop increases. Unless you aid them by gently reminding them that they have items in the cart, or show them the way to the products your online store offers for sale — product category links, specials and featured product listings, customer testimonials, product reviews, etc — unless you include product related links somewhere in your blog, your customers WILL forget. Without including product and shopping cart elements inside your blog pages, you increase the chances that your customers will lose interest in, or forget about buying something from your online shop.

Obviously, this is bad for customer conversion. On this same note it is NOT enough to simply add a stale non-dynamic link to the shopping cart inside your blog to “integrate” it with your store.. (more on this follows)

Regarding items 4-5:

The most common reason that folks opt for an embedded blog, has LESS to do with wanting to keep customers engaged and more to do with wanting to avoid having to create a separate WordPress template. It is somewhat of a mis-statement to say that by embedding your blog inside Zen Cart, you do not need to create a WordPress theme. All embedded blog methods require some kind of WordPress theme (even a generic one) to manage the display of your WordPress content even inside of Zen Cart.

However, WordPress themes have come a LOOOOOONG way from 6 years ago when WordPress versions 2.5/2.6 were the new “improved” kids on the block. There are so MANY more options for easily “growing your own” WordPress theme from scratch, downloading one for free (from a REPUTABLE site), or for purchasing a well written WordPress theme (for less than $50). Finally WordPress themselves have improved the HECK out of the default themes that come with WordPress. The stock “Twenty-Something” series of WordPress themes easily allows one to modify the “Twenty-Something” series of themes  with a minimal of skill required for modest changes.

However, if one is familiar with how WordPress and Zen Cart themes/templates are constructed, it is quite easy using WordPress hooks to make direct calls inside a Zen Cart template to whole sections of the WordPress theme (like for example the footer). The mastery of this method makes it possible for WordPress and Zen Cart to “share” a theme. (see http://tablelegworld.com, http://eyeitalia.com, or even http://overthehillweb.com for examples of this method in action)

One final thing on this.. The thing to be aware of is that once WordPress is “embedded” inside Zen Cart, you may find that you will not be able to use some of your favorite WordPress plugins. There are many WordPress plugins that do not behave well within the WordPress on Zen Cart embedded configuration.

Regarding items 6:

When your WordPress blog is integrated into your Zen Cart store using tools like Zen Cart® for WordPress (zen4wp) & WordPress for Zen Cart® (wp4zen), real time session dependent information IS visible on the blog pages (i.e., shopping cart totals, login info, etc.), which makes it more likely that your customers will return to shopping and complete their purchase after reading your blog.

To Sum It All Up:

Zen Cart® for WordPress (zen4wp) & WordPress for Zen Cart® (wp4zen) make it possible to build a WordPress blog and Zen Cart store that will provide full integration functionality so that wherever your customer’s are within the landscape of your site, they will be able to see & access Zen Cart related links (content) as well as session dependent data anywhere within WordPress and they will be able to see and access WordPress related links (content) anywhere within Zen Cart.

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Together At Last the Way They Should Be | Features & Functionality

Zen Cart and WordPress Integration, , , , , , , , ,

(AKA The Marriage of Zen Cart & WordPress..)

WordPress has long been viewed as a useful tool in a shop-owners SEO arsenal. Because blogs are (usually) frequently updated, this can help with search engine rankings (provided the site-owner is posting RELEVANT content — nonsense content will be ignored by search engines). Blog sites and Social Media Pages are an essential part of your web presence and if eCommerce is a part of your web presence, they can help you engage new and existing customers and serve as a mechanism to drive them to your store and products. Properly used (meaning that you should be regularly creating new, compelling, & relevant content) WordPress (like Facebook) can be an AWESOME tool for driving clients to your website.

Zen Cart® for WordPress (zen4wp) & WordPress for Zen Cart® (wp4zen) makes integration of Zen Cart and WordPress easier than ever.

Why You Want These Add-Ons

  • Helps you to build backlinks to your store
    Now when you post an article, you can provide links to products in your shop for some awesome anchor text. You’re in charge of your blog, so take advantage and put those anchor text best practices to use.
  • Give people something that they can naturally link to
    Although it’s totally possible to email someone about your store and include a link, sometimes people aren’t motivated to do so unless there’s a story to go alongside it. It’s much easier and more natural for people to link to your blog post with content related to your product. And if your blog posts links to those products, then you’ve just helped your website’s SEO.
  • Encourage people to “socialize” your work
    When you regularly post to your blog, you have more content to share with your network via social media – namely, Facebook, Twitter, and Google+. Similarly to how people are more likely to link to your blog posts, people are also more apt to retweet you, like your Facebook post, or +1 it. It’s an easy one-click of a button – and ease is key in getting people to share your work. Once someone has shared your post, then it get shared with their network, thereby increasing its reach beyond your own personal network.
  • Increase website traffic & build a following
    If you post engaging content that presents value to your readers, then they will probably spend more time on your blog/shop and continue coming back for more. If you’re frequently linking to your products, your blog becomes a tool to drive traffic to your shop.
  • Play nice with Google’s Freshness Update
    In fall 2011, Google announced that it had altered its search algorithm to provide users with fresher, more recent search results. Dubbed the “Google Freshness Update”, the intended purpose was to place greater emphasis on returning the most up-to-date web content. Said Google:
    “Search results, like warm cookies right out of the oven or cool refreshing fruit on a hot summer’s day, are best when they’re fresh. Even if you don’t specify it in your search, you probably want search results that are relevant and recent.”
    What does this mean for bloggers? SEO experts largely agree that Google’s update means that fresh content can boost your blog or website in the SERPs for a certain period of time. Bloggers have an advantage because serious shopowners/bloggers continuously publish large amounts of fresh content.


See These in Action

Our Approach

  • Display WordPress content in Zen Cart OR display Zen Cart content in WordPress
  • Seamlessly transfer visitors to Zen Cart or WordPress
  • Minimize duplication:
    • Any change to product data should take place in Zen Cart, WordPress will simply output and display product data.
    • Any change to post/page data should take place in WordPress, Zen Cart will simply output and display blog data. 
      (having to remember to make the same changes in different places is a recipe for disaster)


Features:

Zen Cart 4 WordPress

Zen Cart® for WordPress Basic (zen4wp) is a WordPress plugin that allows shopowners to display Zen Cart content on their WordPress site via a series of widgets.

Zen Cart® for WordPress Premium (zen4wp) extends the functionality of Zen Cart® for WordPress Basic (zen4wp) by adding additional widgets and shortcodes. (including the shopping cart widget)

Here’s the features this awesome new plugin will offer:

Basic Features (Free)
Widget Shortcode Name and Short Description

x

 zen4wp_new
Displays a collection of new-products from the Zen Cart store, including the product’s name, image and price with a link back to the product’s detailed information page. You configure the total number and the number-per-row for each instance. The Zen Cart configuration controls what products are considered new.

x

 zen4wp_featured
Displays a collection of featured-products from the Zen Cart store, including the product’s name, image and price with a link back to the product’s detailed information page. You configure the total number and the number-per-row for each instance.

x

 zen4wp_specials
Displays a collection of products-on-special from the Zen Cart store, including the product’s name, image and price with a link back to the product’s detailed information page. You configure the total number and the number-per-row for each instance.

x

 zen4wp_best_sellers
Displays an ordered-list that contains the current best-sellers from the Zen Cart store, each list-item is a link back to the associated product’s detailed information page. You configure the number to display and whether the purchase-count is included.

Premium Features (Paid)

*To use the premium (paid) features, you must first install the (free) base plugin
Widget Shortcode Name and Short Description

x

 zen4wp_categories
Displays a list of top-level category links from the Zen Cart store, including each category’s name. This widget is hideCategories-aware, i.e. if a top-level category is hidden, its link will not be shown.

x

 zen4wp_manufacturers
Displays a list of links to the index-listing page for each of the manufacturers from the Zen Cart store.

x

 zen4wp_reviews
Displays a collection of product reviews from the Zen Cart store, including the review’s text and rating and the product’s image with a link back to the review. You configure the total number and the number-per-row for each instance as well as the number of characters of the reviews text to include.

x

 zen4wp_testimonials
If the testimonials_manager plugin is installed, displays a collection of testimonials from the Zen Cart store, modeled after the Testimonials sidebox. You configure the total number and the number-per-row for each instance as well as the number of characters of the testimonials text to include.

x

 zen4wp_shopping_cart
If enabled via the Zen Cart admin, this widget shows the number of items and current total amount associated with a customer’s Zen Cart shopping cart. You configure whether the Zen Cart login/logoff and the Zen Cart shopping_cart page links are shown. Requires a SQL patch and a piece of code running on the Zen Cart store.

x

 zenprod id=xx
Generates an HTML link to the specified product in the Zen Cart store, if the product ID specified is a valid product ID, using the product’s name as the anchor-text. If the ID value is not valid, the string “The product with an ID of “xx” was not found.” is output.

x

 zencat id=xx
Generates an HTML link to the specified category in the Zen Cart store, if the category ID specified is a valid category ID, using the category’s name as the anchor-text. If the ID value is not valid, the string “The category with an ID of “xx” was not found.” is output.

x

 zenmfgr id=xx
Generates an HTML link to the specified manufacturer’s index page in the Zen Cart store, if the manufacturers ID specified is a valid manufacturers ID, using the manufacturer’s name as the anchor-text. If the ID value is not valid, the string “The manufacturer with an ID of “xx” was not found.” is output.

 

WordPress 4 Zen Cart

WordPress for Zen Cart® (wp4zen) is a Zen Cart module that allows shopowners to display WordPress content on their Zen Cart site simply using sideboxes.

These admin configurable sideboxes are meant to link your WordPress blog to your Zen Cart store without having to implement complicated WordPress blog embedding solutions/add-ons. These sideboxes pull content links directly from the WordPress blog. All a store owner has to do is to style their WordPress blog to match their store (or vice versa).

Some may find these sideboxes are a LOT less troublesome than blog embedding solutions. Here’s what this module offers:

Basic Features (Free)

  • Blog Pages
  • Blog Post Categories
  • Blog Archive

Premium Features (Paid)

*To use the premium (paid) features, you must first install the (free) base module
  • Blog Calendar
  • Latest Blog Posts
  • Blog Tag Cloud
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