magento site search reporting/analytics - search

I'm working with a client to improve their site search results through the Magento search functionality. We have set up redirects for the top searched terms. My question is, how am I able to track conversions/revenue for these terms now that I no longer have search query parameters on the url?
The client wants to be able to see the effect these search changes have on conversion rate/revenue but I can't seem to figure out how to set this up in GA and Magento doesn't seem to have report that provides this data. Any help is appreciated.
Magento 1.7.0.2

You can try two different approach :
Either by getting the search term by url rewrite table using your current url.
Or you can use the session variables by setting the search teams in the session and getting at required place.
Hope this will help you!

Related

Using a Web Site Document with an XPage - how to setup correctly?

I have set up a small XPage and have until now used the full path to the Xpage for testing, i.e.
http://devsrv1.magerman.ch/Development/Schulungen/Schulungen1_0/Schulungen_(1_0)_Dev.nsf/HomeWithDataView.xsp
I then tried to apply a Web Site Document
But the links are no longer currently functioning. I have the feeling that I'm missing something pretty basic, and am unsure as to what the best practice is. I'm quite happy with having the original request to the hostname resolve to a full path, i.e.
input
schulungen.magerman.com
and have it resolve to
schulungen.magerman.com//Development/Schulungen/Schulungen1_0/Schulungen_(1_0)_Dev.nsf
but haven't found a way to do this elegantly.
At the moment, my relative links '/OtherXpage.xsp' fail as they try to get to schulungen.magerman.com/OtherXpage.xsp
Any pointers?
Create a Web Site Rule. You can create it from your Web Site document in edit mode with action button " Web Site ... / Create Rule".
You can find a description how to fill the fields here.
The problem is usually that you need to add a trailing slash to the hostname
http://www.xpagedeveloper.com/2013/quicktip-get-right-path-when-autolaunching-an-xpage

Website A 'redirect' to subdomain of website B, with content of website A

There has been a question made towards me recently to do the following:
We have a website with Drupal running in IIS.
On that site is an URL Redirect to a website hosted externally, obviously with a name completely irrelevant to the name of our company.
The question now is the following;
They want to change to URL to a subdomain of our website. Example: from "www.external-site.com" to "www.sub.internal.com" (while still showing content of the external website)
They want the current page of that website to be reflected in the URL bar. So it wouldn't say "www.sub.internal.com", but it would say "www.sub.internal.com/solutions/page1.html" (instead of "www.external-site.com/solutions/page1.html")
It's possible that I forgot another 'condition' but have mentioned before this.
So, if someone visits through our URL Redirect to External-website, it needs to show our subdomain instead of their domain in the URL, AND it needs to show the current page when people start browsing while still using our subdomain in the URL.
Now, I checked the external-website, and it seems that most of the links available are relative links (if this would be any useful information).
Currently, the external website is hosted externally, and will remain to be so for next few years. (I believe we bought the company)
I have been asking around and looking up, and the best possible thing seems to use domain forwarding, but even then it still doesn't seem to comply with the entirety that they asked of me.
I am but a 'simple' .NET programmer, held responsible to do support for anything involving the websites, and I can't say I have extended knowledge about infrastructure. (But I can ask people to do this for me)
Is there anything that could solve this?
Thanks so much!
IIS's URL rewite and Application Request Routing (ARR) combo can help you what you want to achive. Here are few links which may guide you to configure ARR. Please note that these links dont exibit exact solution to your problem however you can take clue from it and fabricate your solution accordingly.
http://www.iis.net/learn/extensions/url-rewrite-module/reverse-proxy-with-url-rewrite-v2-and-application-request-routing
http://www.iis.net/learn/extensions/url-rewrite-module/reverse-proxy-rule-template
It sounds like you'll want to use a full-page iframe: do not redirect but show a page with an "inner page" instead: that inner page is the external web site. That way, users do not see the external site in their URL bar.
http://webdesign.about.com/od/iframes/a/aaiframe.htm
You need to configure the equivalent of Apache Virtual Host with Reverse Proxy on IIS.
See this answers:
https://serverfault.com/a/271030
and
https://stackoverflow.com/a/10003306/2131693

Magento SEO URL's suddenly changed, can't reenable

I’m fairly new to the Magento platform but I have a decent amount of experience in web development on apache servers.
A few days ago I was asked to look into an issue that was first made aware of with failing filters.
I had a look at the google analytics data and it seems the SEO friendly URLs have all stopped displaying. The navigation URLs still use friendly words however on the page return the URL is redirected to a basic catalog URL.
http://www.camera-camera.com/cameras-and-accessories.html
instead now it goes to
https://www.camera-camera.com/index.php/catalog/category/view/id/9
I checked the admin config. The Web > SEO URL rewrites are set to YES
I toggled them to No saved and back to yes then saved. Tried clearing the catalog URL rewrite cache
Checked the htaccess file and it hasn’t been touched for months.
Emptied the core rewrite table and reindexed it.
So I’m outta ideas now, was hoping some of you more experienced users can have some input as to what else I can check.
I also found it strange that the URL is now ignoring postback parameters. If you look at their filters they are simply an a link to the same page with a post parameter. This gets striped and ignored now might be related?
A file restore was on the day it happened. Any files I should check it against?
Thanks for any help you can provide !
I just discovered that it was related to HTTPS. I didn't notice but seems the site keeps redirecting to HTTPS even though the filter links etc are pointing to HTTP, in the redirect the parameters are dropped. Now to figure out why its going into HTTPS

Updating an existing website

I've been asked by a family friend to completely overhaul the website for their business. I've designed my own website, so I know some of the basics of web design and development.
To work on their website from my own home, I know I'll need to FTP into their server, and therefore I'll need their FTP credentials, as well as their CMS credentials. I'm meeting with them in a couple of days and I don't want to look like a moron! Is there anything else I need to ask them for during our first meeting (aside from what they want in their new site, etc.) before I start digging into it?
Thanks!
From an SEO point of view, you should be concerned with 301 redirects as (i suppose) some or all URL adressess will change (take a different name, be removed and etc)
So, after you`ve created a new version of the site - and before you put it online - you should go ahead and list all "old site" URLs and decide, preferably for each one, it's new status (unchanged or redirected and if so - to what URL).
Mind that even is the some content will not re-appear on the new site, you still have to redirect the URL (say to HomePage) to keep link juice and SERP rankings.
Also, for a larger sites, (especially dynamic sites) try looking for URL patterns for bulk redirects. For example, if you see that google indexes 1,000 index.php?search=[some-key-word] pages, you don`t need to redirect each one individually as these are probably just search result pages that can be grouped with REGEX to be redirected to main search result page.
To index "old site" URLs you should:
a. site:domainname.com in Google (then set the SERP to 100 results and scaped manually of with Xpath)
b. Xenu or other site crawler (some like screamingfrog) to get a list of all URLs.
c. combine the lists in excel and remove all duplicates.
If you need help with 301 redirects you can start with this link:
http://www.webconfs.com/how-to-redirect-a-webpage.php/
If the website is static, knowing html, css and javascript along with FTP credentials is enough for you to get started. However if the site is dynamic interactive and database driven, you may need to ask if they want to use a php, In that case you might end up building this site in wordpress.
If you are going to design the website from scratch then also keep this point in mind.. Your friend might have hosted this website at somewhere (i.e. hosting provider). You should get its hosting control panel details as well which will help to manage the website (including database, email, FTP, etc.).

Custom URL in Codeigniter using htaccess

I am developing a site on Codeigniter 2.0.2 . Its a site where companies/users can signup and create their own profile page, have their own custom url(like http://facebook.com/demouser), have their own feedback system, display their services.
This said, I have been successful in display the profile page in the following format
http://mainwebsite.com/company/profile/samplecompany
This displays the home page for the company samplecompany , where company is the controller and profile is the method.
Now I have few questions,
I guess it is possible to create to have/get http://mainwebsite.com/samplecompany using htaccess and a default controller. If anybody can help with the htaccess rule , that would be awesome. I am already using htacess to remove index.php from CI but could not get this working.
There will be few other pages for the given user/company such as feedback, contact us, services etc. So the implementation links that come to my mind is of the form
`
http://mainwebsite.com/company/profile/samplecompany/feedback or
http://mainwebsite.com/samplecompany/feedback
http://mainwebsite.com/company/profile/samplecompany/services or
http://mainwebsite.com/samplecompany/services
http://mainwebsite.com/company/profile/samplecompany/contactus or
http://mainwebsite.com/samplecompany/contactus
wheresamplecompany` is the dynamic part
Is it possible to create site links in the format?
I understand using A record for a given domain, I can point a domain say, http://www.samplecompany.com to http://mainwebsite.com/company/profile/samplecompany so typing http://www.samplecompany.com he should be taken to http://mainwebsite.com/company/profile/samplecompany . If this is successfully implemented, will
http://www.samplecompany.com/feedback
http://www.samplecompany.com/services
http://www.samplecompany.com/contactus
work correctly?
I guess it is possible to create to have/get http://mainwebsite.com/samplecompany using htaccess and a default controller. If anybody can help with the htaccess rule , that would be awesome. I am already using htacess to remove index.php from CI but could not get this working.
There will be few other pages for the given user/company such as feedback, contact us, services etc. So the implementation links that come to my mind is of the form ` http://mainwebsite.com/company/profile/samplecompany/feedback or http://mainwebsite.com/samplecompany/feedback
You can accomplish this using routes. For example, in your /config/routes.php file, put this:
$route['samplecompany'] = "company/profile/samplecompany";
$route['samplecompany/(:any)'] = "company/profiles/samplecompany/$1";
The first rule tells CodeIgniter that when someone accesses http://mainwebsite.com/samplecompany that it should process it as if the URL were "company/profile/samplecompany". The second rule captures anything that comes in the URI string after "samplecompany" and appends it onto the end.
However, if you have multiple companies(not just samplecompany), you're probably going to want to extend CI's router to suppor this unless you want to manually edit the config file each time a new company is added.
OK, you're definitely going to want to handle dynamic company names(as per your comment). This is a little trickier. I can't give you the full code, but I can point you in the right direction.
You'll want to extend CI's router and on an incoming request query the DB for the list of company names. If the URI segment matches a company name, you'll want to serve it up using your company/profile method. If it does not, you will ignore it and let CI handle it normally. Check out this post on this topic for more information: forum link.
Here's a great guide on how to achieve what you need: Codeigniter Vanity URL's.

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