Displaying a price from Actinic on another website

[GreyKnight]

Hello

I have a number of home made websites (mini sites if you like) that advertise in greater detail specific products that I sell on my Actinic web store. I was wondering whether it is possible to actually display the "live" product price from the Actinic product page on to the external mini site? In other words, when I update prices in Actinic the prices also update on the mini site.

Many thanks

Graham

[leehack]

Closest you'd probably come is using the Googlebase XML export, but wouldn't be automatic. What a bizarre setup anyway, going for the doorway page trick possibly? Put the information on the page where they buy the product, don't over engineer the most fundamental parts to success. If there is a lot of information, consider using a tabber or something similar to break it up and make it easily accessible.

[grantglendinnin]

Hm, since you're going for the doorway approach why not make use of this KB article?

[NormanRouxel]

An IFRAME on the external site that loads a snippet of code that's been created in Actinic. Like the popup Extended Info page. Or use ideas from this page.

[GreyKnight]

Thanks I'll take a look at your ideas.

I don't know if what I'm doing is what you describe as the doorway approach, but it works brilliantly!

I have websites with URL's that are the actual name of the product, so if somebody searches for that product on Google it pretty much always appears at the top of page 1 (or at least close) regardless of anything else. All the mini sites links to each other to create a network too, they all also link back to the product pages on the Actinic site.

To be honest I find it easier to create the product layouts I want by building my own small sites from the ground up in Dreamweaver. I find it very difficult to understand the way Actinic is put together and never have much luck customising the look of the product pages. I have asked Actinic for help/training on this aspect several time in the past and they have completely ignored my requests every time

[leehack]

It breaks their guidelines AFAIK, but like most rules, they only affect you if you get caught. If you suddenly drop rankings, you will know why anyway. Actinic is html and css as you use in DW, sounds like you need to understand the template element of the system. True there are variables and other items used within certain places in a layout, but you need not worry about those, copy an existing layout and adjust leaving all of the non-html and non-css part alone.

[pinbrook]

I have asked Actinic for help/training on this aspect several time in the past and they have completely ignored my requests every time

Actinic do one day training courses, you might find this useful, or for a similar cost find a freelance actinic developer to spend a day with you

Another way to utilise keyword specific domain names is to build an actinic site, then use a 301 permanant redirect from the doamin to the SPP in actinic for the product. AFAIK this is "legit" as the actinic page will then rank highly benefited by the keyword domain

[Rich Brady]

Another way to utilise keyword specific domain names is to build an actinic site, then use a 301 permanant redirect from the doamin to the SPP in actinic for the product. AFAIK this is "legit" as the actinic page will then rank highly benefited by the keyword domain

You beat me to it Jo... Too slow again!

[GreyKnight]

Hmm, well I can't really see why my sites would break Google guidlines - it's not the first use of this tactic I have seen, one of our competitors use it to good effect and have done for a while. My sites have been in place for a couple of years now too.

I mean - how can it be "naughty" to have a website that lets say is completely focused on the subject of Mars Bars called marsbars.co.uk then another website completely focused on the subject of Lion Bars called lionbars.co.uk? Then at the end of the Lion Bars site a line that says "You may also find our Mars Bars site at marsbars.co.uk interesting, please click here to visit".

That seems perfectly acceptable to me. In fact it seems the most perfectly logical way.



Regarding courses at Actinic - yes, these are what I asked their sales dept. about several times and they ignored me.

[pinbrook]

the point we are making is that it is unecessary to have 2 sites (it doubles the work ) Google will only ever index one of your pages.

you can acheive the same effect ie ranking highly with 301/keyword domain/SPP

[leehack]

The simple way of looking at things is this - The top 10 search results should point to 10 different businesses.

If your doorway site and your main site took up places 1 & 2 in the SERPS, do you think that is fair and the best scenario for a searcher? Think for the masses, not tunnel visioned and you will see the point.

If you knew the perfect formula for top results, why not take the top 10 results and kill every other business using your method?

A choice must be offered and fair results must be obtained, your methods would multiply the size of the web tenfold overnight with nothing extra having been added.

[animal dreams]

you can acheive the same effect ie ranking highly with 301/keyword domain/SPP

Using this technique is it better to host the keyword domain from a different server or not much difference?

[pinbrook]

i've done it on the same server with good effect.