Ecommerce Blog: Keep Ecom Navigation or not?

[CharlesMontgomery]

I am working on a large ecommerce site right now. I am adding a blog to the site for content purposes. I have been going back and forth on this question, and wanted to get your opinions.

Should I integrate the blog into the ecommerce site with the full ecommerce header and/or sidebar, or should I have the blog just be a well designed theme and strip all the ecommerce functionality for it.

I would think that people would be more apt to share and link to content if it wasnt surrounded by links to product category pages and the like.

Thoughts?

[MichealGooden]

I would say that integrating it with the site would be the best option.  When dealing with eCommerce I like to think that the least confusing you can make the process the better they will accept it.  Unless what you sell is extremely interesting no one is going to read it but the SEO rich pages you can create will be priceless in serps.

The big issue is when they find their way to your site through the blog content do you want them to be on some weird page that seems questionably attached to your eCommerce page or one that is integrated with it fully.