Good News for V8

[RuralWeb]

I thought I would post some good news about V8 for a change .

I have been monitoring the performance of a site I upgraded to V8 in mid July and the news is all good:

Google has indexed more pages than the previous V7 site.
Keyword rankings have improved.
Organic traffic is up.
Page views are up significantly.
And most importantly sales are up.

The site has been running for three months on V8 and the owner has had no problems working with it, infact he says he likes it better because it seems easier to use.

The improvements in SEO performance I think are very good and it may be worth the upgrade just for that? Although it will take a year to fully quantify the difference between the V7 and V8 site I think V8 is a big improvement.

The design side of V8 may have its problems but the business end ie getting up in the SEs and merchant usability is better.

[phoenixology]

Wow thats awesome. Im really tempted to getting V8 soon if this benefits your site so much!

What site is it by the way?

[los_design]

Good stuff.

I can also add that our 'oldest' V8 site is showing improvements on the seo side against a similar site using v7.

Not sure but me thinks it could be down to the coding side being a little easier for the bots to get around...

JMHO it may well be a million miles off.

[plantsforshade]

We upgraded - no problem

I thought I might add that we upgraded from v7 to v8 inspite of warnings to leave till Spring. We are a plant nursery and now is our quiet period. No problems all very straight forward and somehow an order was placed while I was uploading the new v8 site inplace of the current v7 site and v8 just downloaded it fine.

The only clitch was trying to use the import orders function on 03 which completely destroyed the software and needed a deleat and reload completely fresh, it happened twice. Please beware of that function and take snapshots beforehand.
Nigel

[los_design]

I think the majority of issues we have come across are linked to design work in v7 that is slightly off key (reluctant to use the word wrong)

With modded sites, unless you are 100% accurate with your v7 coding and mod placements, issues will occur when upgrading as the code is converted into v8 compatible layout...

so heavily custom sites are always best to revert back to a clean theme, ensure all is within site1 folder (and subs), export the site and then go through the upgrades...(with a back up taking first of course)

I am still a fan of being able to export the products 'clean' without any layout. I know this can be done, but an admin toggle would be nice and easy.

IMHO

[RuralWeb]

Shall we keep this as a good news only thread - there are plenty of others with not so good news so post problems there

[los_design]

ok Malcolm

no worries

Lets kick off a list of feel good factors with V8

I like V8 because....

1 it is so much easier to get under the bonnet and change the code
2 no more NETQUOVARS

[dscontroller]

I like it because it just works !!

David

[Darren B]

Hi All

I to have noticed improvements in my site rankings, but on my V7 site, i have just switched over to V8 (last tuesday) so believe google is doing a bit of a shuffle however i have noticed an increase in spider traffic though.

And dispite me putting a line in my robots file google managed to index my test site before the swap.

I do like V8 for the features and stability, i too have had problems with the software not behaving as it should but i could never build a shop from scratch and personaly believe it is a fundamently stable package. As stated heavy customisation of V7 site actually seems to be what causes most people problems when they up grade.

I had to rework some scripts but this is getting easier as i get to grips with the software.

Thumbs Up
Darren

[RuralWeb]

believe google is doing a bit of a shuffle

Whats new! The increase in performance of V8 over V7 is based on data collected over the last 3 years of monitoring the site and discounts the major changes in google algorithums and seasonal variations.

I have other V7 sites being monitored and they are not showing the same trends. I can match improvements in traffic etc with each addition of features to the site - this site was used specifically to test the SEO/usability performance of V8.

And before you ask Im not going to post the url as it will affect the stats of the site in question.

[jont]

Malcolm - which theme / layout is the improved site using? Is it the same as the v7 version?

[RuralWeb]

Its a custom DW template that was upgraded (without problem).