Posts Tagged ‘Marketing’
Starting A Small Online Ecommerce Business
February 20th, 2013
With a little knowledge, skills, and determination, anyone can start an ecommerce business. In this article, I’ll go over a few of the basic components that you’ll need when starting your ecommerce business.
1 – Product or service
If you don’t have your own product or service to market, you can market other people’s products, either via affiliate programs, dropshippers, or network marketing programs. Once you’ve found a top quality product or service to market, you’re ready to get started!
2 – Shopping Cart software
To sell products online, you will need some kind of shopping cart software, to facilitate online ordering and order processing.
3 – Online Payments
To sell online, you’ll need a way to accept online payments. The easiest way to do this is via Paypal. For a full featured merchant account, 2Checkout is a good choice. These are just a couple of many payment services out there.
4 – Communications
Even in ecommerce, communication with your customers is very important. At the bare minimum, you should have an email address and physical address for your customers to contact you at.
5 – Marketing
Many small business owners fail at one of the most important points – marketing. If you don’t properly market your website, you won’t make any sales, and your business will fail. The key is to utilize marketing methods which are effective and profitable for your business. Experiment to find what works best, but here are a few tried and true methods to start with: pay per click marketing, search engine optimization, article marketing, shopping comparison websites, email marketing, and joint ventures.
7 Ways to Build Trust with your Ecommerce Customers
December 5th, 2012
Many new eCommerce businesses have little idea the impact of trust marketing will have in their online business success. For most customers the value of trust is important. This is why certain businesses continue to grow online while others do not. In a very simplified sense online businesses that grow give their customers reason to trust them while many others do very little to instill trust.
Where does that trust come from?
1. Always work to improve Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Most web users refer to their favorite search engine as a litmus test for trust. If they can’t find you in the first 3 pages of results for a search term, they probably won’t look any further. Work to convince the search engines you can be trusted and customers will follow.
2. Making promises and then delivering on the promise. Customers pay attention to how well your word stacks up against the reality of the checkout.
3. Customer service is always a big deal. Do your best to make sure every customer feels taken care of. There are ecommerce businesses that routinely drop the ball when it comes to customer service. Sadly, many will not be with us long.
4. Knowledge-based content must be authoritative. When you give your customers quality information they can use, you extend a hand of friendship to them. You are perceived as someone who is not stingy – someone who can be trusted.
5. Make sure your site is clean. One killer of trust is a site riddled with spelling errors and other glaring mistakes. Many customers will leave when a pattern of error is detected. The feeling is that if something as important as a website can’t be developed with minimal error then how important are the customers and how well will they be taken care of. At that point it’s simply easier for the customer to look elsewhere.
6. Your customers are smart so let them know that you are aware of the fact. If you work to inform without high pressure you are letting your customers know you understand their ability to make informed decisions without the need to be lead. This often enhances trust.
7. The use of autoresponders can help in managing follow up and follow through. No one likes to be left hanging. When you use autoresponders you can effectively eliminate extended response time.
Trust marketing doesn’t have to be hard it simply needs to be managed as an effective means of reaching the goals of your customers as they help you reach yours. If you give more than the customer expects you are likely to see greater trust and increased sales.
Article Writing: Can It Help My Online Store?
May 10th, 2012
Online businesses take time to grow, especially in the first year. If your online store is quiet and you’re waiting for visitors to come and buy, it’s easy to get discouraged. The moment the advertising ends, so does your traffic.
What if you could get visitors to your online store for free? And, not just that, the visitors keep coming for years to come. How does that sound? One of the best methods of generating traffic to your website is by writing and sharing articles. This is not a ‘get rich quick’ or some other type of scam. It’s just plain old fashioned article marketing.
Now, even if you aren’t a writer, you can use this method of getting traffic. It doesn’t take a degree in Literature to succeed in article marketing. All it takes is a little time and energy. If you have that – you can get traffic to your website.
It’s actually quite simple and it is underused, especially in ecommerce businesses.
All you need to do is write a short, simple, helpful article about something related to your online store. If you sell makeup, then write an article about how to choose a foundation color, or how to care for your skin during the winter. Or write a review about a particular product you sell. Once you’ve written your article, you submit it to the article directories.
Article directories are libraries of free articles. They are collections of articles that website and blog owners can use on their sites for free. The only stipulation is that everyone who publishes your article must include your author bio at the end which is where you include your website URL and some intriguing information about your online store.
Having articles in various article directories is a great way of providing links back to your online store, thus building your site’s popularity. When a page has many links back to it it helps to attain a good placement in the search engine results. An article directory which has a high page rank is the best place to submit articles, as this helps to boost your page’s rank as well.
During the process of article marketing, don’t submit an article that is already on your own website without modifying or spinning it to give it at least 25% uniqueness. It could be considered duplicate content if you just submit copies to all the article directories and you don’t want that!
Use keywords in your article’s title and in the beginning of the first paragraph. Spread your chosen keyword/phrase throughout the article as well.
Most article directories allow you to use hyperlinks. For superior article marketing, use anchor text that relates to the keywords you are targeting. This will help you attain a better position in the SERP’s (search engine result pages). If you are targeting “makeup tips” make sure to hyperlink those keywords/phrases in your article or bio box. This will help your online store get higher in the search results for the term “makeup tips”.
Here are a few article directories to submit your articles to: EzineArticles.com, GoArticles.com, Amazines.com, ArticleDashboard.com, Buzzle.com, iSnare.com
In summary, article marketing should be an important element of ecommerce marketing. Now that you see how simple this free method of generating traffic is, give it a try. You have nothing to lose and much to gain.
5 Ways To Drive Customers Away From Your Website
March 15th, 2012
We all want visitors to our website but more importantly we want them to stay and spend money on our website. Below is a list of five ways on how to drive visitors away from your website screaming “Get me outta here!” If you prefer being alone with your website and don’t want all those pesky visitors bothering you, then follow the guidelines below and you’ll get rid of them quick as a blink.
1. Don’t state on your website what you do or what you sell. Make it a complete mystery. It’s like a secret club — your visitors are left in the dark. Have you been to websites like this where you show up and think “What the heck is this site about?” If you’re not presenting a clear statement about why your visitors should spend their money (or at least come back again), then you’re on your way to the bottom of the abyss.
2. Overwhelm visitors with lots of information. Almost as bad as the “What the heck is this site about?” problem is the “Oh my Goodness! Oh my Gracious!” sites. As a visitor, you know the sites I’m talking about. The page opens and your jaw drops. There is a sea of banners and links everywhere. Where do you go? What do you do? I’ll tell you what I do: Click the little “x’ in the upper right-hand corner to get the heck outta there!
3. Make the ordering process really complicated. There’s nothing I love more than putting items into my shopping cart and then spending 20 minutes trying to figure out how to set up an account and pay. Guess what? I sure don’t click the ‘contact us’ button. I click the “x” instead. You’ve succeeded in getting rid of yet another pesky customer who wanted to spend money.
4. Fill your site with outdated information and broken links. Phew. You dodged a visitor with that one. They clicked on a link that was broken — and off they went.
5. Make sure there’s no way for an interested customer or business partner to contact you. Heaven forbid, you might get some spam if you have your contact information on your site.
Thank Goodness you don’t have those gosh-darned customers emailing you while you’re trying to read up on your favorite celebrity’s love life.
Obviously, I’m being silly, but you do know that these examples are true. You’ve seen sites that seem like they are trying to drive you away. If you are spending time and energy putting up a website to make money, then make sure you do it right!
How do you increase sales in your shop?
May 11th, 2010
Start with the copy.
Persuasive and interesting copy (the text on the page) is a key component to making your website stand out. Clear and compelling product descriptions, special offers and romantic stories about how products will positively impact your customers lives are what turn visitors into customers.
If you’re at all interested in search engine traffic, you have to start with generating content for your website, and written content is the fastest and easiest to spread option.
Copy writing can be intimidating at first, but rest assured that anyone can become an effective copywriter with the right information and lots of practice. Below, we’ve assembled some of our favorite resources that are sure to give you a head start over competitors who don’t understand the power of copy.
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